No matter how low Apple’s stock gets (read: still way above where it was a year ago), there’s always someone who thinks it will go lower.
“The Case for Apple’s Stock Price Falling to $270” (tip o’ the antlers to Rajesh)
$270?! Well, it could happen, given Wall Street’s impossible “Apple standard” (by the way, how does a company get some of that sweet “Amazon standard?”). Or if everyone at Apple simply decided to sit on the couch all week watching Archer and eating kettle corn.
At least one analyst predicts it has much further to fall.
Crazy McCrazerson? Loony von Loonstein?
No, it’s Edward Zabitsky of Toronto-based ACI Research. Zabitsky has been saying since January that Apple’s going to drop to $270, and now says it’ll happen within 12 months.
But let’s hear Zabitsky out. Maybe he has some good reasons. Or, barring that, some funny ones.
Competition from Microsoft
HAHAHAHAHAHAHA.
Wait, he actually thinks that?
Competition from Samsung
OK, this one is an actual threat to Apple, although the Macalope feels compelled to point out that while Samsung may sell more phones, Apple still makes more profit.
Web Apps vs. the App Store
…
That iPhone 5 customers unhappy with Apple Maps are easily able to switch back to Google Maps shows that Apple’s grip on the consumer—and its ability to extract high profit margins—is weakening.
Zabitsky’s point is unclear here, but it seems like he’s arguing that because users could use Google’s Web version of maps instead of Apple’s Maps app, then people are no longer locked into apps from the App Store and therefore are no longer going to buy Apple devices.
Whew. There’s all kinds of wrong packed in here. It’s like a wrong sausage, full of the ground up lips and ears of wrong animals.
Apple’s real lock-in isn’t from its ecosystem, it’s from the fact that people love its devices. And how many people really used Google’s Web maps before the app version came out? The Macalope is guessing not many.
Leadership
This ought to be good.
Management discord in Cupertino, as illustrated by the recent ouster of Scott Forstall, the head of Apple’s iOS software group, is another cause for concern.
What discord? If anything Cook squashed the discord, which allowed him to keep some key executives whose names don’t rhyme with and actually are “Forstall.” This is how backwards Zabitsky has the situation. This isn’t dissension among the ranks; it was centered around one guy and that guy is gone. If anything there’s a case to be made that the result leaves too little discord.
[Zabitsky] says he doesn’t believe the Apple Maps fiasco would have happened under the late founder.
Steve Jobs never would have …
Just for teenage kicks, let’s go back to what Zabitsky said in January:
He said the early October launch of the iPhone 4S “skewed” the results for the quarter, though noted that iPad sales of 15.4 million units for the period were “exceptional.”
We don’t have numbers for the current quarter yet, but it’s true that Apple sold 4 million iPhone 4Ss the weekend it launched and only 2 million iPhone 5s.
Oh, wait, that was 2 million iPhone 5s for the launch weekend in China. Sorry. The Macalope made a fake mistake for comic effect there. The company sold 5 million iPhone 5s on its initial launch weekend. Probably another set of “skewed” results. Surely won’t happen again. All downhill from here.
And if you don’t think Apple will sell a metric butt-ton of iPad minis this holiday season, well, the Macalope has an analyst from Canada he’d like to sell you.
Just make him an offer. Any offer.