Apple Investors Already Hate the New iPhone 15 | Hacker News Reader

Apple Investors Already Hate the New iPhone 15

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14 pointspg_123447 comments

I’m not really paying attention so I’m likely about to put my foot in my mouth:

Aren’t phones kind of a mature product? What left is there other than just making the various numbers bigger?

Of course investors and companies want to sell you a phone every year. And they need compelling reasons to convince you too. But sometimes there just aren’t?

This is the part where I think corporations often screw themselves. They’re at the top of the mountain but they only know how to climb.

You're right but what is left is to make it Cheaper, Faster, and Stronger. That's what we need but Apple is not really fulfilling that.

They’re making it cheaper by not raising the price given inflation. Stronger… titanium maybe does that? Faster? I wasn’t paying attention. I assume each generation chip is faster per watt.

my dumb comment was dumb

Huh? iPhones have clearly gotten cheaper year over year as inflation reduces the value of $999.

+ thinner. Even though I prefer iPhones, most Samsung phones look much cooler these days.

This is going to seem snarky but I'm genuinely curious. As someone who is about as anti-Apple as anyone can reasonably be, I've never understood why anyone would prefer the iPhone for any serious reason. I don't use Samsung (Google Nexus/Pixel only for a decade) for clarity. Can you elaborate about why you prefer iPhones? My assumption, as dangerous as those may be, would be integration into the ecosystem. Kindly, please and thank you.

Yep, due to the whole ecosystem - apps, operating systems plus other devices (iPad, iMac etc.) that are lightyears ahead of the competitors, easy to use and sync nicely across the board.

Samsung phones looks nice but Android is a pain. Also, I somehow feel more comfortable putting my data into the hands of Apple than Google - even though privacy is an illusion of course. ;)

Some Huawei products look cool too, but who wants to trust China?

Windows (and any other Microsoft product) has been a pain ever since. Unless you're into gaming, I don't see a reason to use these products.

The ecosystem “just works”. I don’t have to fight and configure things to work. I haven’t used an Android device since 2015 but is there any compelling feature (on either side) to sway someone one way or another.

I’ve never understood why anyone would prefer to live in the ecosystem of the world’s largest advertiser.

I think this is the right way to think about it. Still a lot of value in making the various numbers bigger...if you don't do that, competitors will, and then you'll lose market share way faster than you did before.

But if Apple is looking for a step change in revenue or tech dominance, they'll have to rely more on other innovative/step-change product lines like the VR headset...I'm sure they're doing that, just not sure if investors are all seeing it that way

Two things that I think are quietly brewing and will erupt:

1. Gaming scene. Apple could make new profits if they figured out a way to make most existing games playable on most of their efficient hardware. Seems like they are taking steps in this direction.

2. Private AI. Apple has been building their neural engine into every device, but is yet to fully unleash its potential. Rumors say they are working on this as well.

Apple's problem with games isn't compatibility, not really. It's their complete lack of consistency and commitment to the market. They keep doing things which seem kind of steps in the right direction (that old controller standard, Apple Arcade, some really fairly decent hardware in low-cost devices like the Apple TV), but they've never been committed enough to get the ecosystem to work.

(I'm still a bit surprised they haven't made some sort of first-party stick-on controller a la Nintendo Switch; that might finally jump-start the market.)

It seems like they often work this way. Line up individual pieces, then release a product that ties them together. I.e. the Apple Silicon transition, the VR headset.

People thought mobile phones were a mature market before the iPhone.

I kind of wonder how much of this is driven by weird retail investor behaviour. Like, I don't think there were any surprises for the analysts in this event. Apple does _not_ sell you a phone a year, never has, never will. The buyers of this phone will be, overwhelmingly, at least two generations behind, like with all iPhones; the "upgrades phone every year" market is tiny and completely irrelevant.

>Shares of Apple dropped 7.2% in the week leading up to the unveiling of the company's latest handset.

The shares have probably been dropping mainly due to rumors that China will be banning iPhone sales, which is a pretty big market for them. There usually isn't a single reason like the article is trying to attribute.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/sep/08/china-iphone-b...

But China denies it. Sounds like market manipulation via media.

https://www.cnn.com/2023/09/13/tech/china-denies-iphone-ban-...

I thought the ban was on Chinese Gov't use not the entire country. With that, I just assumed it was in response to US gov't banning TikTok on gov't devices. Essentially titForTat++. Everyone here says China has gotten Apple to allow them to spy on iDevices anyways, so they will know what the phones are doing.

So I guess it's time to buy their shares now, because Apple ain't going nowhere.

Of course people hate it when they have to change their cables, but at least now they can use the same cable for everything. So in time they'll love it more.

I suspect nearly everyone who gets an iPhone 15 will not have to change cables. The phone comes with one cable included, but furthermore nearly every electronic sold in the last few years uses USB-C. The vast majority of people should have USB-C cables lying around.

I genuinely don't understand what a table of Stock Price Change vs iPhone Release has to do with anything. Since expectations are priced in ahead of time, and those expectations might be reasonable or not, a product announcement date is really a meaningless point in time.

After all, anyone would be very happy to own AAPL since 1/9/2007, the announcement of the first iPhone.

Apple is the most gamed stock out there. It always tanks before their events, and it always recovers after. You can bet against that cycle if you like and you might even "win" short term, but long term you aren't going to keep winning that bet.

I'm pretty excited that I can finally get rid of my lightning cables. Apparently that makes me sheeple though.

I have a little plug that does it for me which will make do until I can justify needing a new phone. Maybe five years? But I’m delighted we’re converging on USB C.

I've had my current iPhone for about that long so it was about time to upgrade. Glad I waited.

My wife gets confused with the metric crapton of USB-mini, USB-C, and Lightning cables we have bouncing around the house. The fact that her Mac takes USB-C while her iPhone and iPad take Lightning even flummoxes her sometimes. Consolidating on one cable type will be a boon to our household.

I don't imagine investors can be pleased that Apple has largely held iPhone prices constant since 2020 despite high inflation.

Charts showing the inflation-adjusted price of iPhones declining: https://www.perfectrec.com/posts/iPhone15-price

Investors dont care about price, they care about margins. If the cost to build an iphone goes down over time (I don't know that it does, just something to check for) it doesn't matter that the price is the same.

My sweet summer child. Price increases are margin increasing events.

not if the cost of the item is also increasing due to inflation

Using the phrase "my sweet summer child" violates like half of the comment guidelines and is a boring canned phrase to-boot. If you want to insult someone, at least be creative about it.

"Sweet summer child" actually is a kinda interesting insult—it was actually coined by Game of Thrones, and yet has so thoroughly spread that most people don't realize that. I certainly was shocked when I learned that, because I have never even read or watched the series, and so the entire in-universe meaning of it was lost on me—and yet from usage, it was incredibly clear what it meant. And it's catchy, to boot.

(There were some sporadic uses before Game of Thrones, but we're talking like 100 years before Game of Thrones, and the meaning was a bit different.)

Sweet summer child, it's been more than sporadically used in the American South long before Game of Thrones, and well within this century. GRR Martin just used what was already a well known phrase, and maybe the show made it trendy but he didn't "coin" it in any meaningful sense.

Do you have documented evidence for that? That’s the usual reaction (and mine, too, given my unfamiliarity with GoT), but every discussion around this turns up a few hits from the 1800s, and then basically nothing until GoT came out. Or maybe my info is out of date?

Consider an item that costs $80 to produce that you can sell for $100, netting $20 which is a 20% profit margin.

Say your input costs go up 20%, and due to increased competition in your market segment, you can only raise your sell price by 10%. $80 times 1.2 is $96, and $100 times 1.1 is $110, netting $14 which is a 12.72% profit margin.

The price went up, but the margin went down, so you are incorrect.

can you do the math but without the price increase to $110 and let us know how that margin compares to the 12.72% profit margin at $100?

If I understand your question, you’re asking what the profit margin would be if the cost went up 20% from $80 to $96 while the sell price stays at $100.

The profit margin would be 4%, $100-$96 leaves $4 of profit. 4/100=0.04, multiply that by 100 to get 4%.

To maintain your previous profit margin if the cost to produce goes up by N%, your selling price must also go up by at least N% at the minimum.

If sell price increase % is higher than cost increase %, your margin will expand. If the reverse is true, your margin will contract.

I assume we can all do the arithmetic. In the market, stocks will move based on price increases, since cost inputs are assumed to not move, or rarely move - COVID being an exception to the rule.

Investment news is full of these statistics with dubious relevance.

Drawing any conclusions from this data is likely a fool’s errand.

Investor behaviour around Apple events seems... weirdly predictable. Up before, down after. It's so predictable I'm surprised it doesn't get smoothed out more by people trading against it.

I think that, what investors want out of a new iPhone, and what I want out of a new iPhone, are very different. Investors want a phone that makes Apple lots of money, I want a phone that is good.

what better time to be a share holder. Google is facing an anti trust lawsuit that if it loses hands Apple a monopoly

At which point Apple will be facing an anti-trust lawsuit.

Only if Biden is re-elected.

In what?

Perhaps most of the historical profit had been made on proprietary charging cables?

Shares have dropped because they’ve been releasing the exact same phone for 5+ years straight, adding only features nobody needs.

Samsungs’ phones seem much cooler these days and Jony Ive probably agrees.

Who cares what investors think?

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