I often think that our constant obsession with GROWTH hurts other, potentially worthy goals.
If a company doesn't show growth, it is quickly labelled as "in trouble" or "dead". Why? Why can't we have an Apple that is the size it is now, but concentrates on making better products?
If you look at the last 10 years of Apple products, it is clear that many decisions were made to favor growth (e.g. revenue) over customer satisfaction. Their products are often made worse and delight us less, because someone decided that growth is more important.
I run my own business and growth is not my #1 goal. But I have the comfort of being able to make that decision, as it is my (self-funded) business.
I wish we could ease up on the pressure to grow.
EDIT: the replies are completely missing my point. No need to explain how the stock market works. Just please consider, for a moment, a world where companies don't have to prioritize growth over everything else.
> If a company doesn't show growth, it is quickly labelled as "in trouble" or "dead". Why?
Because of the stock market. Current prices today reflect growth expectations. That's why people are paying so much for Tesla shares – they are trying to get a 'bargain' today, assuming the company will grow to immense numbers in the future. If that doesn't work, share prices will implode and be adjusted to reflect things like revenue and inventory. They will be valued just like the bakery next door.
Private companies also have an expectation of growth but, until they start issuing shares, the expectation is nowhere near as high.
Of course, no company can keep growing forever. At some point reality catches up and they will either slow down growth significantly, or they just crash under their own weight.
Growth is what happens when there is technological change.
In certain circles there's this idea that technological growth requires more damage to people and the environment, but that's exactly wrong, and the past decades have shown it to be a competent fallacious assumption.
We need dramatic, massive growth of new technologies to supplant the damaging ones. Confusingly, some people refer to this as "degrowth", but that's why growth/degrowth is a barren framework for analyzing the world. Because growth is not one thing, it's a high-dimensional direction of many many different attributes.
I think in the context of these discussions, growth is one thing: "The increase in the inflation-adjusted market value of goods and services produced over time." (e.g. EBITDA of a company or GDP of a country).
I don't think anyone is arguing against the word growth in a general sense... Clearly we can "grow" our knowledge, or undertake "personal growth", or whatever.
The people who argue against "growth" are, in a way, agreeing with you: They're saying "GDP is a terrible metric to optimize and we should find a way to stop optimizing for it. It creates perverse incentives. Digging oil out of the ground and burning it to make a ski-slope in the desert increases GDP. Selling houses to each other for ever-increasing prices increases GDP. Those things suck.
They're saying that perhaps we could make the world better by changing the metrics we optimize for... Perhaps that's population happiness, quality-adjusted life years per person, projected climate change impact, world biodiversity, etc etc. And they're saying that maybe if we optimize on those things, GDP is going to have to drop. And that should be OK. But with the system we have built, it's not OK. So we're in a bind.
I wish we could just do it for minimum levels of food and shelter at least. Lack of the most basic security creates fault lines throughout all of society.
You're using the term "growth" in an entirely different manner than the person to whom you are responding, which is funny because you note the word has multiple dimensions yourself. They are talking about market growth and the raw obsession with profit. $40 billion dollars in ONE QUARTER with a single product line.
You are discussing technological development and advancement, which should be talked about separately from financials. Endless drive for profit and economic expansion seems to be an end to itself, whereas technological advancement for lower pollution and greenhouse emissions are necessary.
Total number of people-rides delivered within x% of scheduled time with y% loss rate.
Total number of TEU delivered within x% of scheduled time with y% loss rate.
If the company is doing a job well, these should go up over time. Sure, you can add on more conditions (i.e. with z max pax/sq.m., with p max wait to board) but ultimately, if the thing is doing its job right, there should be growth. It should be getting more people to places.
Every successful subway system shows growth. Taiwan Metro and TfL are both well renowned and both show continuous growth.
It's not about growth, it's about productivity. All tech innovations increase productivity.
Growth to a railway is better logistics so things are directed more accurately, more energy efficiency, more efficient use of labor, etc. They can also increase their sales, but I think your comment was implying those are stagnant industries.
All technology is ultimately making improved outcomes at lower cost. That is what technological advancement is.
You made up a railway logistics company instead of addressing the point about a commuter subway. There is no need for growth in a subway unless they are adding lines or stations. If there is constant growth outside of that then it's just hurting consumers.
If there is the profit test then the subway operator will always strive to continue maximizing revenue while minimizing cost. That could be automated trains without drivers, making the trains more reliable to encourage more ridership, marketing events like free weekend riding, and all sorts of things.
It is the government-run subways that are stagnant, smelly, late, broken down because no one in the entire org has any incentive to do anything other than the bare minimum to avoid getting fired.
Except government run subways work well in nearly all countries except the United States. It's not always a red versus blue issue, but other countries don't have to constantly fight against one party that gets into government to prove government doesn't work by making government worse.
Until the growth of population slows down, a commuter subway that isn't iterating and improving capacity will get worse too. Just look at New York pre-covid. The subway was literally and figuratively collapsing under the growth in passengers.
> If a company doesn't show growth, it is quickly labelled as "in trouble" or "dead". Why? Why can't we have an Apple that is the size it is now, but concentrates on making better products?
The company is owned by shareholders who want growth or a massive dividend. If AAPL can't grow then return profits to shareholders through stock buybacks or increased dividends.
> I run my own business and growth is not my #1 goal.
If you own your own business then do what you think is right for you. As an AAPL shareholder all I want is increased value in my shares.
The pressure to grow stems from the massive amount of wealth that can be harvested from growth. The only way to curtail that is with economic policies that punish investors for getting too rich too quick, but almost all such proposals are instantly dead in the water as soon as anybody speaks their names.
Try moving to Luxembourg, Ireland, Switzerland, the dozen of small islands with special states from UK, US, and some other countries, Singapore... Plenty of choices and its already the case. Look at Cargill legal structure (e.g. search Cargill International Luxembourg for a good laugh)
The US can impose this on other countries easily. You don't comply you don't get to touch the USD, no bank can survive without it (at least right now). The OECD recently even got Switzerland to agree on the global minimum tax.
Sure you can still go to Russia or China but these companies really want to take that risk?
There’s another aspect to this and that’s the iPhone is Done. Finished. Completed.
I recently switched from a 4 years old X to and iPhone 13 Mini and to be perfectly honest I can’t experience any difference, it’s basically the exact same phone in a smaller form factor. Hadn’t it been for the size of the X being an issue, I probably could’ve stayed on it for 4 more years.
Great from a consumer (and environmental!) standpoint, not so great from a quarterly report standpoint.
If you're not busy growing you're busy dying. Staying stable in a world where everything else changes doesn't sound any easier than growing to me; when you become irrelevant you don't make steady flat profits, you just die.
Ignoring the “how publicly traded companies equities function” aspect. What would be the medium to longer term outcome of Apple “making better products?”
In an open market I would assume that better products drive new users and/or increased revenue. The way Id measure that is probably something like units sold, ASP, LCV, etc which should all feed back to top or bottom line. And if revenue or profit is increasing id call that … growth?
So it seems a bit tautological. UNLESS you mean to measure better products some way besides revenue, units sold etc. And then Im really interested in what that quantification would be, and why it would lead to different outcomes.
> ...Why can't we have an Apple that is the size it is now, but concentrates on making better products?
> If you look at the last 10 years of Apple products, it is clear that many decisions were made to favor growth (e.g. revenue) over customer satisfaction. Their products are often made worse and delight us less, because someone decided that growth is more important.
The shareholders care about making money and little else: they don't care about releasing better products. If worse products will make them more money, the shareholders will demand the company make its products worse, and they'll get their way.
I agree with your comment but I think it is out of place here.
I skimmed the article and it doesn't seem to suggest apple is in trouble, or that it is dead, it is merely commenting on why certain revenue figures are lower year over year.
In fact, it seems explicitly to convey that the sky is not falling.
Bugatti can only exist in it's current position because it is the halo marque of the Volkswagen group, it is almost certainly a company that loses money given the extremely limited market to which they target and the amount of investment and development that goes into their products. I think it's reasonable to think that the various bankruptcies of the prior companies which bore the name are emblematic of it being unable to exist by itself.
EDIT: I've just realised that VW spun off Bugatti - my comment is no longer valid.
I think anyone who would accept the statement "It is good that there are perpetually growing companies" will also accept the statement "It is good that there are perpetually growing companies and exclusive-luxury-segment non-growing companies".
That's all a growth-less company can be. A simple niche, with a very specific audience that knows exactly what they want. It's the exception that makes the point. You can't apply that to a company like Apple.
Well that's not entirely true. AT&T is basically a zero-growth company as well. And they trade at a P/E of 6.7. A similar valuation for a zero-growth Apple would be about $40/share.
This was one of the top reasons IIRC that made Jonathan Ive left the company. Before Tim Cook was the leader of the company, they were not only technically innovative, but innovative in a more global and universal way.
This is what dividends and other similar instruments (e.g. stock buybacks) are is suppose to help massage. IE growth is not 10% its 5%, but we are issuing x additional dividends per share or we're buying back x amount of stock and such. At least, in theory functional market capitalism.
In practice, I agree with you, even when a company is treating investors well via dividends they still get hammered on "slow" growth.
Lets be clear here though, Apple is not contracting in their size, they're simply just not growing at the same gangbuster rates they have been for over a decade. Can't last forever
Interestingly, Apple has such an enormous cash hoard (tens of billions, iirc?) that they could one day announce that they will no longer prioritize growth since it doesn’t make sense at their size… and merely dedicate to a reasonable dividend instead. Bam, suddenly their stock price soars even more, finance folks hail the move, and other companies rush to mimic it (to lesser success).
It boils down to opportunity cost, established in the cost of capital.
Apple is valued at $1T and all the nice things that come along with that (huge salaries) only if they deliver growth.
It's 100% fine to not have growth, but then they have to get a different set of investors (or buy themselves out) etc. where those expectations are different.
With 0% growth their equity price is near 0. Which is again, fine, if those are the terms being made.
But it means less money for speculation, investment, R&D, expansion etc..
Every investor is allocating capital based on the opportunities in front of them.
If some other team can consistently do better, well, money will follow that.
To a great extent - we want this.
Usually corporate growth means 'surplus' for the rest of the economy and especially consumers.
For every $1 in APPL profits, probably they have created more than that in surpluses. In other words: our lives are materially improving, specifically by more than we are giving apple as consumers. Hopefully.
These economics don't always work well, esp. when there are monopolies or for where economics work differently, like healthcare. (FYI capitalism and certain fundamental realities exist in Healthcare, just that the context is different).
It remains to be seen if Apple will find other ways to grow, my bet is they are not out of tricks just yet.
How much would you pay for something that has X% (where X > 0) risk, and 0% growth?
You would likely pay $0.
Because you can put your money in a 'risk free' investment, like a bank account, and get a minimum return.
There is the 'enterprise value' which would include assets (i.e. maybe Apple has $20T in cash in which case, obviously their stock is worth whatever their assets are worth, but at some risk-premium discount). Most companies have some assets but usually not a ton relative to their value.
Of course, 'risk free rate' may be negative (not common, but could happen), and so 'losing money' on a stock that doesn't grow would be better than keeping it under your mattress or in the bank, but we're not there yet.
But otherwise, a company that doesn't grow is fairly worthless to most investors other than for some other strategic logic, because they usually have other, better places to put their money.
Go ahead and invest in companies with 0% growth and see how well you do with your retirement.
Yes, companies can have a positive 'book / enterprise' value that must be heavily discounted by all kinds of risks, and future 0% growth cash flows even much heavily discounted, in which case, theoretically, yes, there are a few companies around that might have giant pools of liquid assets that might be worth something ...
... but in general, companies that don't grow are worthless.
Owning a quickly evaporating pool of cash vs. one that is growing, compounds quickly over time.
I think you have mistaken “growth” to mean “stock growth”.
The rest of this thread is talking about y/y revenue and profit growth.
If profits are sustained at $100 BB annually every year perpetually, and I own 0.01% of the company. They can afford to (and can be made obligated to) pay me $10 MM annually through dividends or equivalent stock buy backs.
This is a useful company, and I would buy its stock for the right price.
What's the point in buying shares of a company with no possible upside? That's not a useful product for a retail investor, and it's not usable for stock compensation for employees either.
That's not useful to a retail investor though. You know its exact value and so does whoever's selling it to you, meaning you can't get a bargain on it.
It might be useful if you got it for free, but in that case you should sell it to a bank or someone who can actually use a fixed-income asset.
> What's the point in buying shares of a company with no possible upside?
As the Beatles would say, to get you money to buy you things.
A black box that spits out one dollar bill (after tax, if that’s your concern) every hour is a useful product to anyone even if there is « no possible upside ». Don’t you see the point in getting one if the price is right? Wouldn’t you pay $10000 to get one? $1000? $100? $10? $1?
Because a company has more downside risk than government bonds, the income they produce would need to be higher. Probably would look very similar to other corporate bonds which is basically what zero upside stock would look like.
> How much would you pay for something that has X% (where X > 0) risk, and 0% growth?
Surely at least book value, in case that risk is not infinite?
> a company that doesn't grow is fairly worthless to most investors other than for some other strategic logic, because they usually have other, better places to put their money.
A company is a money making machine. If it doesnt work it produces each year the same amount of money. How can that be worthless?
> if I'm an investor, then i want that the company is making me more tomorrow than today.
That is a very common sentiment, but badly misguided. What you should want as an investor is a good return on your investment. You can't eat customer satisfaction, but you can eat profits and profits can be produced by satisfying customers.
In fact, the only thing that should matter to you as a rational investor is the price of the investment relative to the profits you expect the company to make in the future. There is a price at which even a rapidly growing company will no longer produce a good return relative to alternatives, and there is a price at which a company that is profitable but not growing will produce a good return. That is what should matter, not growth per se.
The reason people are attracted to growth is that growing companies are priced with a risk premium that produces outsized investments in some cases. But survivorship bias makes investing in a growing company appear more attractive than it actually is. In the long run, the market incorporates all information into the price and regresses to the mean.
And growth has all kinds of unpleasant externalities too. It really should not be pursued for its own sake.
U.S. tax policy favors capital gains income over dividend income, provided that you're not a short-term trader. People overlook this massive thumb on the scale when pondering the trend toward share buyback programs rather than dividend payments.
Can you explain this more? Is this a recent (~decade) thing? I remember my grandfather investing in companies with a solid dividend as much as share price growth; has something fundamentally changed?
For over a hundred years now, realized gains (i.e. the difference between what you paid for a stock and what you sold it for) have been taxed at different rates depending on how long the investment was held.
Over the decades, the definition of "long-term" and it's special treatment has jumped around ALL OVER THE PLACE (i.e. 6 months, 2 years, 10 years, etc). During the Reagan administration (believe it or not), the special treatment for long-term capital gains was abolished. It was brought back around the turn of the century under Clinton (believe it or not).
So it's possible that a middle-aged investor during the 1980's and 1990's grew accustomed to the conventions of an era without a long-term capital tax rate. And never adjusted their mindset or investment strategies when the long-term rate returned. However, the 80's and 90's are a historical aberration.
Although the definition of "long-term" has been one-year for quite awhile now, the special rates for long-term gains were continuously lowered during the 2000's. So that it's now EXTREMELY more advantageous to accrue long-term capital gains rather than dividend income. Those rate changes have been one driver for recent share buyback programs (the far greater driver has been the availability of cheap money under post-2007 Federal Reserve policy). However, it's worth noting that even the lowest capital gains rate today is higher than when the tax was first introduced.
Not necessarily. A share that keeps it value and reliably pays out steady dividends just above interest rates still is an attractive investment for some
Apple also doesn’t need that many investors at the moment, so why should it care much about what investors want?
Because investors own apple, so apple has to do what investors want. Or more specifically the CEO has to do what investors want otherwise they fire him and find someone else who will do what they want
Replacing the head honcho doesn’t guarantee that share prices will start growing rapidly. It’s quite possible that no CEO in the world can accomplish that.
Also, as I said, share prices don’t need to go up to make investors happy. for example, the typical pension fund is perfectly happy with an investment that will never win them the jackpot, but also is extremely unlikely to lose them everything, and very likely will regularly pay dividends.
So, a majority of Apple’s shareholders may be perfectly happy with the status quo.
> Or more specifically the CEO has to do what investors want otherwise they fire him
The board is the one that has the power to fire the CEO not shareholders.
And yes shareholders are involved in deciding the composition of the board. But unless there is some egregious governance issue or a complete breakdown in financials no one is going anywhere.
Exactly, as an investor I want the companies I invest in to ultimately eat all of the other companies. If it's not growing, the value of my stock is not growing.
Then don't invest in a company that has an agenda different than yours. You can have a company that is doing fine, investors are not losing money but maybe not making as much as someone else thinks they can. Along comes the activist investors that then start forcing the company to change to meet their exepctations. Is that really how an investment in a company should work rather than someone investing because they think the company is doing the right thing?
I'm curious if and what the next big computer thing is. I think a lot of people saw the iPhone coming at least 10 years before it got here. I bought palm pilots realizing they weren't what I really wanted but the hope has been there for a while. Is there anything right now that will reach that?
Obviously VR is the hope but I think we're pretty split on whether we want that. I can't really see Google Glass type thing replacing the iphone. There's some intresting stuff in this microsoft future of computing video about surfaces and glass, but It doesn't feel like one revolutionary consumer leap to get there:
I suspect AR glasses, if done well, will be the next big world changing thing. Each WWDC conference releases more SDK advancements directly related to AR. They are also moving more of their AI features (Siri, text recognition, etc) to be on device rather than processed on a remote server. Something necessary for a smooth AR experience. Lots of releases and updates over the last couple of years all point to AR glasses.
The big issue with AR is that many people prefer to use eyeglasses instead of contact lenses. Many also wear sunglasses outdoors. I don't see a big AR breakthrough coming until someone figures out how to combine AR with the other functionality people expect from their glasses.
All very good points. I don't wear glasses, so hadn't thought about some of those. I do wonder if the usefulness would change peoples preferences or behavior.
The meta demo video I saw recently clearly shows that they're trying to seamlessly integrate prescriptions into their product via software and dynamic lenses.
Yeah this makes sense, and the Microsoft video I linked to does seem to be solving the same kind of problem, the ability to access the data available to a computer in any context, on any surface.
Humane (some ex-iPhone people) is working on some sort of projection like UI, but they have put out very little detail about it.
Apple is working on some sort of AR related heads up display. If the hardware can work well for that, the benefits there seem obvious if you can get the UX right. Looking at the world and pulling up information in your visual field would be really useful. Could still pull up flat 'screens' in your visual field for normal text/web interaction.
It's hard to do well given latency issues (need very low) and no real ability to draw black (AR uses ambient light), but if it can be pulled off I'd expect that as the next platform/device shift.
Just as Steve Jobs camped out by the river and waited for economical capacitive touchscreen technology to come floating by, somebody somewhere is waiting for adaptive optics to become practical at the consumer level. At that point it'll become possible for AR glasses to begin to replace conventional eyeglasses for presbyopes and myopes, and that'll be the NBT.
Everybody working in the AR field now is starting too early. In 2003 the iPhone was impossible, while by 2007 it was inevitable.
The Fly[0] came out in 2005, but it requires special paper that told it where it was on the page. It even worked as an MP3 player! I had one; It was big and clunky, and didn't work well if you wrote fast (which I did). It was still a neat thing.
> Microsoft’s platform has never been weaker. For all the growth in phones, every professional worker on the planet is sitting in front of a PC.
Or a Mac, or a Chromebook, or an iPad. It's hard to talk about this as a monolith since there are pretty distinct groups — most of the people I know who get to choose their device are using Mac or Linux (which is admittedly an atypical crowd of developers, scientists, lawyers, architects, etc.) but there are a ton of people who have professional jobs where that's not the case (e.g. everyone I know who works in healthcare uses some kind of Windows device which is so locked down that it might as well be an iPad, and I know some people at government agencies who are favoring ChromeOS for security reasons since you can lock those devices down so hard).
I make that distinction because it doesn't help Microsoft very much strategically if the cashier at McDonald's is sitting in front of a Windows box because they're interacting with a single application and will use whatever their next employer has standardized on when, say, they go somewhere which uses Square. Someone who uses Office is a bit more but as an increasing percentage of people aren't doing anything which they couldn't do in a browser, that's not as strong as it used to be. None of that means that Microsoft is going away but I think it does leave them really wondering how to avoid falling behind the next trend like they did with mobile devices.
Not sure if that's what you mean but that could be understood as "the price/earnings ratio has gone down to just 27 because the growth expected currently is lower than what it used to be".
In 2010-2019 it was rarely above 20 and it even went below 10. The decade average was 15.
This will probably never happen, but what I want is: 1) only two personal devices (Apple Watch and small iPhone) that both contain my digital life, use biometrics to securely identify me, etc. 2) larger "environmental" devices from many manufacturers like wall displays, beautiful furniture that has magically appearing keyboards, mice as needed, perfect car integration, etc.
The large environmental devices would be 100% securely sharable and be in private homes, hotels, offices, metro stations, etc. With either my Watch or iPhone, no matter where I am, if I need to, I would have my work life, entertainment life, etc. at my fingertips.
iPadOS 16 beta has StageManager that is sort-of OK for providing a more general desktop environment. I would expect my Watch or iPhone to trigger whatever I need in my environment.
I get so tired of being "sys admin" for my digital devices. I want to spend as close to zero time doing this as possible. Similarly, my Dad is having his 101 year old birthday next month and although he has always been very good with computers, it is frustrating trying to help him remotely. So:
In addition to what I mentioned above, I would like to have VR/AR for quick telepresence to help him and other family members who might be 100s of miles away physically.
They basically won the smartphone round of the game. We don't know what the Next Thing is, they don't either, nobody does. If they are (unknowingly) working on what will be the Next Thing, it is probably in "wearables and accessories" because that seems to be where their experiments live. But the fact that that section of their company is basically noise at the moment just reflects the fact that the Next Thing hasn't arrived yet.
I don't think we should put too much thought (as the article seems to) into their quarter-to-quarter results in the Land of Lost Devices. The point there isn't to sell lots of devices, it is to either try new ideas (which will probably fail because we only get like one big new device class per generation) and have a foundation to quickly try and catch up if their competition finds the Next Thing.
Cars are an expensive industry to get established in with a lot of details to get right and major regulatory concerns. My guess is that they looked at that, the struggles the entire field is having (Google's been at it for ages and is nowhere near ready for a consumer product), and decided that the better outcome is to build better integrations with existing companies which are really good at building cars — I know multiple people who decided what to buy in part based on who did the best job with CarPlay.
AR is more complicated: there are some neat ideas but the form-factors are brutal in terms of hardware design and there is weak consumer demand. Apple has one of the most popular AR products now (AirPods) but that took a while to mitigate the compromises forced by the physical limits. I'm expecting some additional hardware from them soonish based on the references in recent developer builds but will not be at all surprised if that takes a while to find popular adoption. I think it's easy to underestimate just how hard it is to deliver an application which is compelling enough to get people to pay non-trivial amounts for. VR has been educational in that regard going from something which was too hard / expensive to fairly available but not yet having found mainstream demand.
Moonshots. And Apple is never first to market with anything. They take ideas that have traction and marketplace and then try to build a better one. The car wont make it because there is not a a successful industry to steal from yet. They have a chance with AR, but there is not enough adoption yet for Apple to be successful here yet (And apple is terrible with gaming).
AR isn’t only gaming. It’s to become the interface for a person’s world, instead of just the internet. It’s an extremely powerful position to influence what someone sees everywhere they look.
This is why companies are trying to break into it. Hardware is the main gap at the moment but Apple is the best hardware manufacturer in the world. The M chips are a step in this direction (high performance, low power).
100% but Apple always follows others leads and then makes a better product. Right now AR/VR leans heavily into gaming as for the audience is already built in. AR has so many applications I think eventually it will destroy the VR market usability wise. Im just saying for Apple it stands a better chance than their car efforts.
That's a common take but I think it's based more on PC/Android fans looking for an easy dismissal than any serious understanding of the history of the field. You saw this a lot when the iPod or, especially, iPhone came out which both ignored the degree to which devices were substantially different from other ones and, especially, that there were older experiments going back to the 1990s or even 1980s but that they chose not release products which were seriously compromised by the hardware.
In the case of VR/AR, we know Apple has been working on VR products since at least the early 90s but those never made it very far other than a few things like QuickTime VR. As we can see from the rest of the field it was only until the last half-decade that people were getting things like the visual quality or especially latency to acceptable levels and battery life / weight still seem to be a substantial problem.
> It’s to become the interface for a person’s world, instead of just the internet
I imagine you will still use the internet in AR, otherwise how will you get information? What you probably meant is a web browser on desktops and phones.
This is the correct take. True innovation (the uncanny valley stage) is left to pioneers. Apple will spot trends with potential and claim to be the innovator. It would show courage and humility to acknowledge this, but I understand it doesn't fit their PR narrative.
Wireless earbuds did not originate from Apple, neither did desktop ARM.
First True Wireless Earbuds are probably the Japanese Onkyo W800BT (2015)
Windows Surface / Windows RT was the first major ARM based desktop/laptop consumer device (2012)
I’ve been waiting for apple made ar goggles for a while now. I suspect the technology is not there yet. Facebooks mobile vr oculus sucks big time in terms of fidelity, so i cant see how decent wearable ar can be made. Cars tho yes. Cant wait for a new premium brand as european carmakers are a tad boring (unless of course you like revamped bling).
Borrowing money to buy stocks is cheaper than repatriating their foreign cash. They’re hoping the U.S. will offer another tax holiday for companies hoping to bring that money home.
Which is why interest rates being so low is a scam. Apple credit rating is also AA+ so they're borrowing at virtual nothing interest. Why use cash you can grow vs use more debt.
I think this is where things are wrong.
Why should they reward people who do not do work?
There is no system in nature, where you put into it the energy once (aka capital) and expect it to work indefinitely (aka dividend).
Shareholding should work as loans - where you put money in and expect to get % back in a given timeframe and no more.
The reason the system is flawed is that you have workers, who actually produce value, struggle to even rent a place to live (buying is increasingly out of reach) while shareholders have parties on their private jets.
Apple shouldn't be paying any dividends and instead of it should pay bonuses to the workers.
It's not weird to borrow money essentially for free, it's actually prudent. This may change if/when interest rates rise, but until then it's more optimal to borrow.
Two ideas: 1. If you can borrow at 2 or 3%, it might be worth it to keep cash-on-hand so you can jump on unexpected opportunities that may arrive in the future. 2. Paying dividends makes stock price go down. So it's basically equivalent to deciding to sell a small percentage of shares on behalf of each of your investors. Which is why fewer companies are worrying about dividends
The market generally prefers buybacks over dividends because of the tax advantage. Borrowing money has been much cheaper than repatriating cash up until the last few months.
Who is buying apple products every year anyways? I have my iphone from 2018(I don't want a gigantic phone they offer now) and my home macbook is from 2014 and works perfectly. The last apple product I bought is airpod pro's and those were from a friend with an apple discount 2+ years ago. I wonder if apple will suffer from a reliability issue(too reliable!) like appliances built in the 1950's. Meaning you buy an apple product and it lasts forever and doesn't need to be replaced.
Apple has 860 million people who have active subscriptions.
They are quite happy to have people on older devices so long as (a) they buy a subscription and (b) they buy another Apple product in the future. Numbers to date show them succeeding on both fronts.
My work does... we get new Apple stuff whenever it comes out (they buy phones and laptops for workers). And a lot of our employees are always buying new Apple Watches and iPads for personal use.
If a company doesn't show growth, it is quickly labelled as "in trouble" or "dead". Why? Why can't we have an Apple that is the size it is now, but concentrates on making better products?
If you look at the last 10 years of Apple products, it is clear that many decisions were made to favor growth (e.g. revenue) over customer satisfaction. Their products are often made worse and delight us less, because someone decided that growth is more important.
I run my own business and growth is not my #1 goal. But I have the comfort of being able to make that decision, as it is my (self-funded) business.
I wish we could ease up on the pressure to grow.
EDIT: the replies are completely missing my point. No need to explain how the stock market works. Just please consider, for a moment, a world where companies don't have to prioritize growth over everything else.