If you’re old enough to drink or old enough to drive or old enough to have mastered object permanence, you’ll probably remember when pundits were wringing their hands because the iPhone represented two-thirds or more of Apple’s revenue.
“If the iPhone is suddenly wiped from existence by Thanos,” the straw man of these pundits the Macalope just made up said, “What will Apple do?!”
[Strawman pundit based on actual pundits, void where prohibited by law.]
It’s a fair question since Avengers: Endgame is a documentary.
Well, now that Apple has just reported results in which the iPhone represented just half of Apple’s revenues and the company still managed to have a record revenue quarter on the backs of wearables and services, surely pundits are relieved.
Ha. Ha. Haaaaaaaaaaaaa.
Let’s start with The Register’s Paul Kunert.
“WTF? Apple iPhones shrank by more than $22bn in fiscal ‘19.” (Tip o’ the antlers to 5cat.)
The Macalope is going to assume that “WTF” stands for “What the fiscal?”
Over at MarketWatch, Beth Kindig says “Investors aren’t noticing Apple’s long, slow decline.” (Tip o’ the antlers to @designheretic.)
The smartphone market is saturated, prices are falling, and services won’t offset the company’s main device offerings until 2023.
Maybe services alone won’t but services and wearables did just that this quarter. Also, remember, according to pundits, having one thing take up too much revenue is bad. Because Thanos.
The bigger concern, which will not appear in the earnings report scheduled to be released Wednesday, is that consumer confidence may wane in the future.
OK, but if that’s true, it’s bad for everyone. Weird that Kindig doesn’t have such concerns about Microsoft.
Weird how many global economic downturns only affect Apple.
The writer has no investment in Apple shares.
Well, you’d hope not! She thinks it’s a terrible investment!
So many of these articles seem written under the assumption that Apple will never release anything new ever again. It’s true that Apple isn’t a growth company anymore (or right now), but that doesn’t mean it’s in “decline.”