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Apple (AAPL +3.2%) roundup: 1) iPhone 5 shipping times have dropped to just 1 week after falling...
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Monday, November 26, 2012, 5:03 PM ETApple (AAPL +3.2%) roundup: 1) iPhone 5 shipping times have dropped to just 1 week after falling to 2 weeks a few days ago. 2) Apple has bought the trademark for "Lightning" from Harley-Davidson (HOG). 3) Apple, which has made clear its interest in lowering its dependence on Samsung, has reportedly dropped Samsung as an iPad/MacBook battery supplier in favor of Chinese firms Amperex and Tianjin Lishen.
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This news story has 67 comments:
It's demand and supply coming to an equilibrium. We go over this with every damn product.
Is this how consumers really think and behave?
If there is a lead time they say Apple is losing customers to in stock Samsung/Amazon/B&N... brand products, can't control manufacturing, has yield problems, and they are not really shipping.
If there is stock they say Apple doesn't have enough demand or customers, inventories are growing, wrong mix of products, pricing is too high, etc.
How about .. "Apple has just launched three new products in each of it's product lines simultaneously and is matching supply to the extraordinary customer demand. They sold millions of devices over the respective launch weekends. Apple has pulled off in one month product launches and supply balancing that would take their competitors a quarter or half a year to do - and all the while they have completely satisfied their customers and accelerated the Apple buzz entering into the all important holiday shopping season." (OK I exaggerate - the Mac sales were not millions of devices on launch weekend - iPhone and iPad were but Mac was "only" 100's of thousands in the first weeks after launch - Apple is the _only_ PC vendor to grow unit sales over the past year.)
And don't forget the tale of two stores in one Mall on Black Friday. This is why I'm very optimistic about this quarter at Apple: http://cnet.co/TpQBjc
We will all know how this story will play out in Mid-January when Apple reports its holiday quarter earnings & revenues. I think it will be a blow-out quarter. However, if it is, I wonder how many of these "Apple Haters" (like Clayton Rulli above) will have the guts to post on here that they were wrong? Most probably still won't buy into the story - even then. Sad.
My guess is there are a lot of S3s piled up in warehouses after Samsung stuffed the channels so they could beat the iPhone 4S last quarter.
so yes, i would say this is good news for Apple. that supply is coming up just before Christmas.
Apple are in the middle of their biggest quarter ever, make no mistake!
Samsung will lose this business. Still, at the end of the day when the legal shoes drop and Samsung pays up it still may have been worth the cost (legal damages and lost business on components from Apple) if their theft allowed them to get a firm foothold in the top end smart phone business.
By the time Galaxy III gets added to the suit it will 1) have been thrown out and 2) will be irrelevant to Samsung's next smartphone iteration
The only reason I own AAPL is for lemmings like you. Please go out and make me some money this season by stocking up on every IProduct you can afford.
http://bit.ly/QmpR2q
90% of Apple rumors turn out to be smoke. Just like chop chop.
Maybe you think it's BS, wearing those AAPL-tinted sunglasses, gensearch.
Are you and rocback both AAPL employees?
http://on.wsj.com/UoOQCL
“Typically, this type of lawsuit in the U.S. takes so long that by the time anything can be done, the products in question are old and irrelevant,” said Mark Newman, senior analyst at Sanford Bernstein in Hong Kong. “The earlier case in California, where Samsung was fined $1.05 billion is really an anomaly. Analyzing other cases across the globe, Apple hasn’t really received much success—they have had a few embarrassing results, particularly in the U.K and South Korea.”
http://1.usa.gov/SpPRID
In SK, it was a wash. It doesn't make any difference anyway as South Koreans are nationalist in their purchasing.
http://1.usa.gov/SpPRID
They are losing a ton of business, and there is no way they are making money on the Galaxy III, with all the ads and deals. Plus the legal damages will cause them to be in MAJOR pain.
Apple on the other hand is selling stuff like there is no tomorrow. Apple is holding all the cards. The Apple store in Chicago was so crowded there was a line just to get in, and the products rolling out the door had to seen to be believed. This will be a MASSIVE quarter for Apple.
Apple will thrive and Samsung will thrive. The major difference is that the pressure is always going to be on Apple to innovate new products. Samsung only has to copy new ideas and that's always easier - unless they get sued again. LOL
I have an acquaintance who bought a Droid and I know all he does with it is make [and receive] phone calls. I had to show him how to get to the Play Store, but he wasn't interested in any apps. He wasn't interested in music, or photos, or games. All he knew how to do was change his ring tone. I'm not even sure why he didn't just get a damn trak phone. But he was happy he spent less money than had he bought an iPhone. In some respect I was happy for him also.
I'm beginning to wonder whether he's the typical Android user.
You end up having people using a GS III with the latest android software along with people using a basic phone with android because that is what they got for free from their carrier.
I picked out a Galaxy III for my wife because of the larger display. I spent a weekend with it and found it to be more annoying than user friendly. I'm well above average when it comes to technical and I spent 3 hours trying to get the damn thing to sync with iTunes. If you Google you'll find it's a common problem to even get it to sync; the default "solution" is to use a different media player and sync with that. I'm not interested in spending 3 or more hours of my time to get a smartphone to do what my wife wants it to do.
If someone wants to buy a Galaxy that's fine. If someone wants a Blackberry that's fine. From reading Android blogs and threads those people seem to care as much or more what other people are using then what they're doing.
I have as much interest in telling people what phone they should buy as I do in telling someone what kind of car or what kind of bread they should buy.
Your argument also breaks down when you look at tablets. Usage is dominated by iOS and it's not just fractionally larger, it's a lot larger. The Barnes and Noble tablet sees higher usage than the Kindle Fire or Nexus tablet. It looks like the Kindle Fire is being used as a paper weight.
As for using Itunes, that's precisely why I like my droid. No need to install Itunes on anything I use. I can literally plug my device into any computer and drag and drop as I please. I also like the available of extra storage via microSD as I enjoy taking lots of videos/pics with my phone.
The IPhone is great if you have bought into that system. For those of us who prefer a bit more freedom, Android is the way to go. I've always been a fan of Amazon's MP3 store thanks to their lack of DRM (Itunes had that forever until recently) and the app works great on my android tablet and phone.
Sad that Apple's 2+ year old iPhone 4 is selling for the same price as Samsung's flagship phone released 3 months ago? From who's perspective?
>>> The IPhone is great if you have bought into that system. For those of us who prefer a bit more freedom, Android is the way to go. <<<
This is in a nutshell the big selling point of Android, it's why the Nexus is so popular, Android is hackable and Nexus is king of hackability. Three of the top 5 paid apps in Google Play are rootkits or file system tools. To the other 80-90% of the planet who don't like to tear apart their OS, this is a non-feature.
For the rest of the world, the fact that the volume of Android is growing fast should be alarming.
>>>>>&g...
Indeed. The firm found almost 13,000 distinct types of mobile-targeting malware — which is a huge jump from last year, when the threats numbered less than 2,000 — and practically all of those are geared toward the Android OS. “Android malware shows no signs of slowing down, putting users on high alert,” warned McAfee. - http://tchno.be/TkYD9n
<<<<<&l...
I'll let you do the research on iOS malware, I could post a number, but it's so small you wouldn't believe it anyhow. Essentially Android is the spiritual successor to Windows. Everything people like about Windows on the desktop Android has on the phone/ tablet. Everything people hate about Windows.... is there in spades.
http://onforb.es/ACB0T2
Malware is the biggest issue on older Android OS's. iOS isn't spared from malware either:
http://cnet.co/118snM9
My understanding is there has been exactly ONE trojan on iOS and no other forms of malware in the wild (though I'm certain it's possible to attack an individual phone), the rogue iOS app was yanked from the Apple store and never seen again. The ratio is 13:000:1; essentially "Mobile Malware" really means "Android Malware".
Here's Kaspersky in May "Our experience tells us that in the near future, perhaps in a year or so, we will see the _first_ malware targeting iOS,"
http://huff.to/SOjPo3
Most of the engineers and IT guys I know have Android phones as well. Yet almost everyone else I know who has a smart phone has an iPhone. Using the cold hard logic of the engineer, what does this suggest to you?
They are master marketers and product designers and it's amazing how much of a following they've managed to create and how much people are willing to spend on their products despite their limitations and closed eco-system.
For the more tech-y people like myself, we prefer other platforms to iOS/OSX. It's ironic that at one point, Apple was the niche company/product back in the 80s/90s, and now they are the mainstream force to be reckoned with
Regardless, as DM suggests, engineers and programmers are an edge case. Investors should be more interesting in what appeals to the mainstream.
http://bit.ly/U04a4e
Btw, Apple is being sued by Samsung for the IPad Mini
http://read.bi/UUFBbZ
1. Apple customers are more valuable than Android customers. They buy more, are significantly more profitable.
2. Apple has managed their supply chain to eliminate product shortages while store surveys seem to indicate products are selling.
3. Apple has a full pipeline of new products as we move into the biggest retail season of the year, with a very robust retail channel that includes their own stores as well as many other heavy hitters who are have an incentive to sell to the significantly more profitable channel represented by Apple users.
4. Apple still has relatively low penetration of key product categories (smart phones) and key markets (China.)
5. Apple is building a platform in the way that Microsoft built MS-DOS and Windows in the 1980s and 1990s - an operating system that enables customers to have access to both hardware and software solutions that create strong product preference all things being equal - or even if competitors have some functional superiority.
6. Apple is penetrating the business market - the most lucrative market - in a way that it hasn't done in 20 years.
7. Microsoft's Surface seems dead in the water (based on scant info)
8. Microsoft's Smartphone is chasing Apple and Android.
9. It seems like a two-horse race at this point between Apple and Android/Samsung. But a race for growth and long term profits.
12:41 PM The iPhone 5 (AAPL) launch has once more made iOS the most popular smartphone platform in the U.S,
http://on.barrons.com/...
Just ignore the recent marketshare reports out of Europe and China ;-) It might upset you.....