> The bottom line: Apple has 24 to 36 months before it has its own AOL moment, according to Brian Mulberry, client portfolio manager at Zacks Investment.
That quote alone is hilarious. What a low effort article.
Do any of these people know that Apple is a hardware company and all of their services are just a side business? Apple is poised to make a fortune selling devices powered by their low power consumer chipsets that can run neural networks. There's really no competitor in that space.
Apple has plenty of time and money to watch other people flailing around trying to make AI first devices until they even really start to take it seriously. Even if someone else figures out to make a killer mobile AI app, it will absolutely support iPhones for the foreseeable future. All apple needs to do is make sure their chip pipeline supports it.
Google is the one that is facing an existential threat. Most people see their search engine as basically just a shitty ad-infested chatbot that produces worse results than chatgpt.
A hardware business cannot demand a P/E ratio in the 30s range, especially given that supply chain disruptions are going to eat heavily into their margins.
That's not an accurate quote. You skipped the rest of it:
> "With the cash they have on hand and the loyalty they have…there would have to be something disruptive in the marketplace that would draw away customers. It's not there yet," he says.
I take that to mean they're in a good position now, but they might start losing customers in the next 2-3 years, should stronger competitors show up. I don't disagree. I don't see Apple doing anything special that will protect them as different kinds of hardware come to market. Steve Jobs was responsible for the iPhone and iPad. Apple can only ride on his work for so long.
I really hope investors buy into this as it’ll be a great new entry point into the stock. I mean they seem to be buying into whatever without thinking so why not. AOL moment indeed.
There is no one challenging Apple on hardware right now. And all of these AI tools can run on Apple machines. So I am not sure that I see Apple falling from its current situation.
That said, Apple isn't really riding this wave of AI. So I feel that Apple isn't benefiting, thus it could likely be growing more than it is if it has an AI strategy that was effective.
So I don't think Apple is a "loser" but it also isn't a "winner." It is more of a spectator who is still strong in their own domain, at least for now.
Apple tried to ride the wave of AI and failed (Apple Intelligence?)
Apple has recently released a paper which says AI is all maths but a lot of people are saying that they are just "coping" with them losing the AI race.
Apple is one of the largest companies, with I guess a lot of cash and just power. So if they still can't win/compete effectively in the AI race when they had gone all in once does raise some questions about what really is happening within Apple.
> Apple tried to ride the wave of AI and failed (Apple Intelligence?)
It was a crappy product, I agree. I keep it disabled.
> Apple has recently released a paper which says AI is all maths but a lot of people are saying that they are just "coping" with them losing the AI race.
It is a single paper and not reflectively of company strategy.
> Apple is one of the largest companies, with I guess a lot of cash and just power. So if they still can't win/compete effectively in the AI race when they had gone all in once does raise some questions about what really is happening within Apple.
Apple has to compete with other hardware vendors primarily right? Samsung mostly. And they are doing that effectively.
Everyone's models are being obsoleted 6 months after they are released. It is a capital intensive market and it isn't clear anyone is actually profitable. I am not sure that Apple needs to get involved in this race, especially when there is little that is proprietary for more than a few months.
That said, if Apple did need to get into this race, they should just buy Anthropic. It is a no drama company that just delivers. It would match Apple's corporate style and it would likely deliver a lot of key features into the various OSes.
Similar conclusion - they're "losing" if the goal is marketshare and mindshare dominance. If the goal is just to carve their own niche, they're already there.
But, if you compare the growth into new spaces Apple did in the 2000s, then sure Apple of today hasn't done anything new in a while. Does it need to? Maybe from an investor point of view?
The hardware side is its own thing - some do not challenge their hardware because their goals are different like Facebook going cheap on VR rather than expensive).
While nobody has as complete of a portfolio on what the M-chips have accomplished, the GB10 and Ryzen AI Max Pro seem to be similar in capability, yet late to the party and at this point just one-offs.
But I don't think that really matters. Few people are buying based on deeply researched specs, so whatever is cheap and has battery life will do and there's happily plenty to choose from these days.
> There is no one challenging Apple on hardware right now.
This isn't true IMO. Everyone is challenging them and has for a long time. Android phones have better hardware, by any arbitrary metric. Camera, screen, battery, processor - Apple doesn't have a moat here. Don't get me wrong, their stuff is good. But is it the best? Ehhh... it's close, for sure.
Same thing with Macs, just a bit more in Apple's favor. Is M series good? Yes. Is it the best? IMO, no. x86 still has an edge in many applications. Some newer processors, like Intel's Lunar Lake, challenge M in both power and power consumption. Is ARM the future? IMO no - ARM is just a vessel. Low-wattage SOCs with RAM baked on are the future for mobile devices. Intel can do that, and they did, and it competes. But with all the benefits of x86.
I mean, I'm driving 2 1440p 240hz monitors right now on Lunar Lake over thunderbolt. Not a single dropped frame, ever. And at less than 30 watts - that's for everything, it's an SOC. Apple users a bit deceived - once you jump onto the Apple ship, you stop looking at competitors. But the competitors are good. Like, really good these days.
Apple's moat is their software. They keep a tight, tight grip on it. iPhones are popular in the US because of iMessage, pretty much exclusively. If Android phones could send and receive iMessage and transfer everything over, then it's over for Apple. They know that which is why it would never happen willingly.
If Apple's moat was hardware, they would have no problem distributing their software like candy. But they don't.
No. Blackberry _never_ had the market penetration that apple had. They were an enterprise first company and barely had a foothold in the consumer market.
Apple wiped out blackberry in the enterprise market after it dominated the consumer market and it _barely even tried_.
No, not really. Peak Blackberry was both tiny compared to iPhone usage today and in a very different context, with very little of the economy or daily lives invested directly into a rich ecosystem dependent on the phones.
I think Apple turned into a "loser" when they let the MBA guy take the CEO seat from the designer guy.
Yes, short term business efficiency has increased. But other than an under-the-hood chip change (which, to be fair, was really impressive), they haven't really done anything disruptive since.
> "With the cash they have on hand and the loyalty they have…there would have to be something disruptive in the marketplace that would draw away customers. It's not there yet," he says.
Like what, a working phone that doesn't spy on you?
[Mind, they seem to be forgetting about that lately.]
Curious of if I missed some poor privacy practices from Apple lately. I know they had the default advanced image search stuff [0], but that's all I'm aware of.
I use my phone too little to have an opinion, but I have two macs, one running Sonoma and one running Ventura, and the latter - and older - is the most stable.
It all depends on who is going to be the loser faster. If the other companies that are spending $1T on soon-to-be-outdated infrastructure don't make money from their new super AI systems, Apple might just as well be the healthiest of them all.
Definitely not seeing the horrendous collapse of the once mighty Apple.
That said, they have always been behind the curve with AI, and recent product releases/updates have been, uh, suboptimal. Latest Logic Pro is a disaster (e.g. unstable/crashing, removed key shortcuts killing productivity) and don't get me started on the dumbing-down of iOS.
They are for sure headed in the wrong direction, but they are just too big to fall overnight.
> That said, they have always been behind the curve with AI
I am reminding when Android phablets were really cutting into the marketshare of Apple a decade ago. Apple was reluctant to release larger phones for a couple years and it was an opening.
But then all of a sudden Apple did release larger phones and the capabilities gap disappeared and then Apple's phone quality + CPU speeds + surrounding ecosystem of devices made the Android competitors pretty irrelevant.
The problem will come when LLM driven assistants become more popular. There's no way to have a nice one on iOS without Apple giving up more control than they're willing to.
Apple will make an exception if it's in their own interest. They also have enough money to just buy out a company and airlift them in. If there's one company that could stumble around for 20 years and still have enough money to continue without much worry, it's them.
Readit News
That quote alone is hilarious. What a low effort article.
Ironically I was playing around with BasiliskII last night and was reminded how janky and tasteless the OS got before making the break to Aqua.
But now there is no “war path” Steve Jobs to come in and basically lay down their life fixing the product line up.
I searched & asked ai but I couldn't find the context.
I mean, it seems to be working. Which is sad and I think says something about consumers.
Apple has plenty of time and money to watch other people flailing around trying to make AI first devices until they even really start to take it seriously. Even if someone else figures out to make a killer mobile AI app, it will absolutely support iPhones for the foreseeable future. All apple needs to do is make sure their chip pipeline supports it.
Google is the one that is facing an existential threat. Most people see their search engine as basically just a shitty ad-infested chatbot that produces worse results than chatgpt.
In 2040s
A hardware business cannot demand a P/E ratio in the 30s range, especially given that supply chain disruptions are going to eat heavily into their margins.
> "With the cash they have on hand and the loyalty they have…there would have to be something disruptive in the marketplace that would draw away customers. It's not there yet," he says.
I take that to mean they're in a good position now, but they might start losing customers in the next 2-3 years, should stronger competitors show up. I don't disagree. I don't see Apple doing anything special that will protect them as different kinds of hardware come to market. Steve Jobs was responsible for the iPhone and iPad. Apple can only ride on his work for so long.
That said, Apple isn't really riding this wave of AI. So I feel that Apple isn't benefiting, thus it could likely be growing more than it is if it has an AI strategy that was effective.
So I don't think Apple is a "loser" but it also isn't a "winner." It is more of a spectator who is still strong in their own domain, at least for now.
Apple has recently released a paper which says AI is all maths but a lot of people are saying that they are just "coping" with them losing the AI race.
Apple is one of the largest companies, with I guess a lot of cash and just power. So if they still can't win/compete effectively in the AI race when they had gone all in once does raise some questions about what really is happening within Apple.
It was a crappy product, I agree. I keep it disabled.
> Apple has recently released a paper which says AI is all maths but a lot of people are saying that they are just "coping" with them losing the AI race.
It is a single paper and not reflectively of company strategy.
> Apple is one of the largest companies, with I guess a lot of cash and just power. So if they still can't win/compete effectively in the AI race when they had gone all in once does raise some questions about what really is happening within Apple.
Apple has to compete with other hardware vendors primarily right? Samsung mostly. And they are doing that effectively.
Everyone's models are being obsoleted 6 months after they are released. It is a capital intensive market and it isn't clear anyone is actually profitable. I am not sure that Apple needs to get involved in this race, especially when there is little that is proprietary for more than a few months.
That said, if Apple did need to get into this race, they should just buy Anthropic. It is a no drama company that just delivers. It would match Apple's corporate style and it would likely deliver a lot of key features into the various OSes.
But, if you compare the growth into new spaces Apple did in the 2000s, then sure Apple of today hasn't done anything new in a while. Does it need to? Maybe from an investor point of view?
The hardware side is its own thing - some do not challenge their hardware because their goals are different like Facebook going cheap on VR rather than expensive). While nobody has as complete of a portfolio on what the M-chips have accomplished, the GB10 and Ryzen AI Max Pro seem to be similar in capability, yet late to the party and at this point just one-offs. But I don't think that really matters. Few people are buying based on deeply researched specs, so whatever is cheap and has battery life will do and there's happily plenty to choose from these days.
Allow running any AI agent natively and see world take off. Apple is sitting on so much value and straight up refuses to share.
This isn't true IMO. Everyone is challenging them and has for a long time. Android phones have better hardware, by any arbitrary metric. Camera, screen, battery, processor - Apple doesn't have a moat here. Don't get me wrong, their stuff is good. But is it the best? Ehhh... it's close, for sure.
Same thing with Macs, just a bit more in Apple's favor. Is M series good? Yes. Is it the best? IMO, no. x86 still has an edge in many applications. Some newer processors, like Intel's Lunar Lake, challenge M in both power and power consumption. Is ARM the future? IMO no - ARM is just a vessel. Low-wattage SOCs with RAM baked on are the future for mobile devices. Intel can do that, and they did, and it competes. But with all the benefits of x86.
I mean, I'm driving 2 1440p 240hz monitors right now on Lunar Lake over thunderbolt. Not a single dropped frame, ever. And at less than 30 watts - that's for everything, it's an SOC. Apple users a bit deceived - once you jump onto the Apple ship, you stop looking at competitors. But the competitors are good. Like, really good these days.
Apple's moat is their software. They keep a tight, tight grip on it. iPhones are popular in the US because of iMessage, pretty much exclusively. If Android phones could send and receive iMessage and transfer everything over, then it's over for Apple. They know that which is why it would never happen willingly.
If Apple's moat was hardware, they would have no problem distributing their software like candy. But they don't.
Apple could have said "we are not doing any sort of AI" and they would still be worth what they are today.
Did the author forget that everyone and their grandma has an iPhone in their pocket and an Apple Watch on their wrist?
Apple wiped out blackberry in the enterprise market after it dominated the consumer market and it _barely even tried_.
Yes, short term business efficiency has increased. But other than an under-the-hood chip change (which, to be fair, was really impressive), they haven't really done anything disruptive since.
Like what, a working phone that doesn't spy on you?
[Mind, they seem to be forgetting about that lately.]
[0] https://support.apple.com/en-us/122033
I use my phone too little to have an opinion, but I have two macs, one running Sonoma and one running Ventura, and the latter - and older - is the most stable.
That said, they have always been behind the curve with AI, and recent product releases/updates have been, uh, suboptimal. Latest Logic Pro is a disaster (e.g. unstable/crashing, removed key shortcuts killing productivity) and don't get me started on the dumbing-down of iOS.
They are for sure headed in the wrong direction, but they are just too big to fall overnight.
I am reminding when Android phablets were really cutting into the marketshare of Apple a decade ago. Apple was reluctant to release larger phones for a couple years and it was an opening.
But then all of a sudden Apple did release larger phones and the capabilities gap disappeared and then Apple's phone quality + CPU speeds + surrounding ecosystem of devices made the Android competitors pretty irrelevant.
Apple should remember from its Maps debacle that it's difficult to make up years of product tuning overnight, no matter how talented a team you have.
Time >> talent
Because everyone has talent within the same order of magnitude, but no one has invented a time machine.