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Apple Will No Longer Reveal How Many iPhones, iPads, and Macs It Sells (theverge.com)
Yesterday, during the company's Q4 earnings call, Apple's chief financial officer Luca Maestri said the company will no longer report unit sales of its main hardware divisions, including iPhones, iPad, and Mac. "This is the same as protocols Apple already follows for its smaller devices, such as the Apple Watch, AirPods, and HomePod, which are bundled under the 'Other Products' category," The Verge reports. From the report: The announcement comes after iPhone unit sales percentage was unchanged year over year, despite a revenue bump of 29 percent. The decision to stop disclosing unit sales is because that figure is "not representative of underlying strength of our business," Maestri said. "A unit of sale is less relevant today than it was in our past," he says, adding that unit sales increase are still a clear part of Apple's goals. While unit sales may not accurately represent Apple's business performance, it's a figure that analysts and journalists have used to calculate a product's average selling price. For example, that number can provide insight into how well different iPhone models are selling, as newer iPhones like the XS, XS Max, and XR are priced higher than older models like the now-discontinued SE, 6S, and 6.
No other company does and it all it does is a few with their Wall Street numbers reguardless of what their income levels are.
when your unit sales start to slip.
If apple cant brag they hide information.
We are still making money in the short term by overcharging suckers, while losing market share, and also pushing iOS developers away from the Macs they required.
This is the problem with the short term thinking and incentive structures in western multi-nationals corporations, who only care about the next quarter or so. Which is typically done at the expense of long term business viability.
A trillion dollar company, supported in vast majority by (essentially) a single product. Why wouldn't they try to obfuscate when basic facts start looking "iffy?"
Really, the whole iThing ecosystem came to be in 15 years, and it's a monoculture. It's a huge bet for it being sustainable. Heck, 15 years ago, GE was king of the hill and way more diversified, look where they are now.
"National Security is the chief cause of national insecurity." - Celine's First Law
These are not the numbers you are looking for...
I'm wonder if this isn't a sign that sales are down?
e.g. Blizzard did the same thing with WoW when they peaked at 12 million subs and were hemorrhaging customers.
... it is.
There's a good reason to abandon bragging rights.
It little behooves the best of us to comment on the rest of us.
Really? It seems to be a major part of the yearly (or so) Apple product rollouts... all the people lined up around the block waiting for days for the newest iStatus product. Come to think of it... I haven't noticed those spots on the nightly news for a while. Maybe the lines aren't that impressive any more. Has it gotten harder to find enough suckers to stand in line to fork over a grand or more to get the latest shiny bauble that's only marginally shinier than the old one?
CUR ALLOC 20195.....5804M
Milk the suckers dry.
Over the past 8 years the sales of iPhones has exploded, now they are slowing, so they are trying to hide/bury these numbers. It's that simple. They will try to grow revenue , not buy volume sale of phones, but through unit average cost and related services.
As an investor I want as much data and transparency as possible, this is worrisome as they are intentionally trying to obfuscate some key metrics.
https://fossbytes.com/why-2700-apple-lisa-computers-are-buried-in-a-landfill/
sec filings, annual reports... a trillion dollar public company has obligations to report certain things, and unit sales better be one of them.
"A unit of sale is less relevant today than it was in our past" ==> "A unit of FINANCE is less relevant today than it was in our past"
Go fuck yourself.
Regards,
A former customer
Not that I was ever a fan of Steve Jobs, but lets be honest with ourselves. The company isn't worth shit without him in charge. Remember what happened last time????
Seriously, since Jobs got sick and even more so after he died, Apple has made mediocre hardware and OS X has become worse with
each revision.
This is all pretty discouraging. I know Microsoft sucks, and now Apple sucks too. I sure as hell don't intend to use anything Google has to offer because I trust Google about as much as I would trust a rattlesnake.
Is Linux the smart choice these days ? I am sincere when I ask this. I know next to nothing about Linux. I need a secure and reliable system which allows me to do some photo and video editing. I believe I am done with Apple laptops and their phones too. I just cannot pay for what I see is less value with each passing year. The last Apple laptop I had that I thought was genuinely a nice piece of gear was a 2013 Retina 15". I don't want what Apple is selling now even if they give it to me for free. The new Apple stuff is just insulting to people who know what good hardware and software is.
is timmy going to show at the next keynote? One showing off the increasing ASP or just a profits one. That is going to go over real well.
Smartphone sales have saturated in North America and Europe. Combine that with performance that far exceeds most user's needs so people are waiting longer to upgrade. Its nothing specific to Apple, all the manufacturers are seeing this. And we already saw this with computers, saturation, performance beyond need, upgrade timeframes lengthening, ...
Apple is not losing marketshare. Smartphones sales have hit a plateau for everyone. We have saturation in developed nations and devices who's performance far exceeds the needs of most users so upgrades are less frequent. Smartphones are repeating the saturation and performance conditions that we have already seen with personal computers.
Perhaps that says something regarding the future of the company.
* https://www.businessinsider.co...
#DeleteChrome
When you are tanking you don't open the drain cocks.
That's all you need to know.
Face it. Apple has terminal diarrhea. And incidentally, fuck the Zuck.
Apple was first, and it locked in a lot of older folks who had more disposable cash. Meanwhile, my employer bought me a mobile, and it was never an iPhone, so by the time I needed to buy my own, Android was pretty equivalent and MUCH less expensive, so I went with Android. As a huge plus, Android phones can sideload.
On the other hand, I was a super Mac fanboy . . . until its products provided less value--less bang for the buck--than the competition. I'm typing this on the second work/gaming laptop that I've purchased since my last MacBook purchase. Sure, it's Windows, and sure, some things about Windows are annoying, but how much would a MacBook with a fast GPU, expandable RAM, fast SSD, and huge second HDD cost? Oh, wait, you can't buy one, but something ALMOST equivalent is twice as much. Double. 2X. The operating system is not so fantastic, the Foxconn production lines not so much better for Apple than the Foxconn production lines for other manufacturers, to justify this kind of premium.
People know value . . . eventually. Apple used to be rather innovative, and their products, while much more expensive than the competition, were priced according to their value. Now Tim Cook is just wringing out the profit machine. There is no vision at Apple. Cook's a logistics guy, a Wall Street darling, but he's not a leader; he's just in charge. There's a huge difference.
Make love, not reality television.
no joke. There are other stocks that are profitable in both short and long term. Apple stock will be a gamble.
They already do not report numbers for their failures like iWatch.
Now they only admit iPhones and Macs are joining this category.
So in fact they are revealing all you need to see the big picture. Apple is dead.
this probably means that their sales are falling and they want to protect their stock price. The last thing they want is all the executives loosing their bonuses!
I'll see your Constitution and raise you a Queen.
With flat unit sale numbers, there is a limit to how much they can keep increasing prices to maintain revenue growth before sales starts to drop.
If they sold 500 billions of iPhones then multiply by its avg price of $500 each resulting a total cash of $250000 billions.
But the company can lie in how much is its revenue for paying lesser taxes or VATs.
If any company that does not count the number of sold products and it does with improper cashes then it is illegal and against the states administrations.
You reveal such numbers when they are great. When they are not, you just keep quiet. Par for the course.
. . . sales would go up.
I still think of my iPhone 6 SE as a new phone and am expecting it to last a few more years -- when it is time for me to buy a new phone, there better be another new iPhone SE out there, otherwise I'll start having to buy one of those malware ridden android phones (my brother's android phone has so many distracting popups from the default uninstallable software that the provider added which leads me think that an alternate option is to just not get a phone and live like the good people of the 1930's did)
Apple is not losing marketshare.
Apple is losing marketshare.
You are mistaken, from your own citation: "Global smartphone shipments declined 2% annually ... Shipments for Apple were up 1% annually". That's a share increase. You are confusing market position with market share.
I knew that one constructive Apple thread was going to be a one-off.
To all of those suggesting that they're hiding something, I'd like to remind you of a few facts:
1) Apple reported units SOLD (as in, to end-users for money) -- Everyone else counts units SHIPPED (to warehouses to languish?)
2) Apple ONLY sells high-end phones, Android market share always counts every last phone even if it's limited functionality.
Disclaimer: None. If I were to buy an Android phone, or build a linux box, it would cost as much as the corresponding apple product because I don't want to be saddled with half-functional technology.