Feb 8, 2025 · 23m · tbpn
Is APPLE Headed Downhill? (Investor Breakdown)
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In this investor breakdown, the hosts analyze Apple's Q1 financial results, examining lagging iPhone hardware sales, structural challenges in Greater China, the underwhelming rollout of Apple Intelligence, and the company's strategic evolution into a high-margin digital toll booth.
Statements from this episode (12)
Coogan: Apple Q1 iPhone sales fell nearly 1%, missing analyst estimates
“On Thursday, Apple reported that iPhone sales for the quarter were down nearly one percent from the year prior to 69.1 billion, a miss from the 70.7 billion analysts were projecting, according to FactSet.”
Coogan: Apple Q1 China sales dropped 11%, missing $20 billion forecast
“The company said its earnings report, it said in its earnings report that sales dropped in China by more than 11%, missing the twenty billion.”
Hays: Apple Intelligence shipped prematurely and required significantly more consumer testing
“So really seemingly a product that, that should have not been widely, you know, shipped and just needed quite a bit more testing.”
Coogan: Apple's Greater China revenue declined for a sixth consecutive quarter
“Greater China's year over year revenue was down for the sixth straight quarter. Just as it has been for nine of the last 12, I graphed China's trailing 12 month revenue to avoid seasonality with year over year quarterly growth, and so revenue has been declinin…”
Hays: China's urban population exodus removes a massive iPhone growth driver
“China has a, is no longer adding people to its major cities. There's actually been an exodus from cities, which is a whole other issue in China right now, leading to Peter Zai Han has a good bid on You know, basically how much oversupply there is from a housin…”
Coogan: European iPhone sales outpaced US growth despite lacking Apple Intelligence
“In fact, Europe outgrew the U S in iPhone sales and they don't have Apple intelligence at all with the exception of the UK for a couple of weeks in December.”
Coogan: OpenAI Deep Research excels at substantiating theses, not originating them
“In other words, the model does a much better job of filling out a thesis than coming up with one. And so it seems like it's great. Deep research is super great for, hey, I already read the report. I understand this. I have a thesis. I just need you to go and p…”
Coogan: Human alpha remains in synthesizing proprietary data absent from AI
“So there will still be a huge alpha and huge premium, not just on the interesting thinking and being able to puzzle things together which I think humans are still uniquely good at, but also just bringing new facts to the system, bringing new, new tokens.”
Hays: Meta wins as Apple retreats from speculative hardware research spending
“I think the winner out of this is certainly not consumers. But it's more so, you know, somebody like Zuck, who's said, I'm willing to spend tens of billions of dollars to own the next personal computing platform.”
Hays: Apple transitioned into a luxury brand, abandoning zero-to-one product innovation
“Apple's like a new luxury brand now where they make the best phone, but they're no longer the company, the hardcore zero to one innovator.”
Hays: Tim Cook lacks the visionary leadership to win post-iPhone computing
“I do think that it will become more and more clear that Tim Cook seems to be able to generally manage this, like, luxury brand type version of Apple, but it doesn't feel obvious that they have this sort of visionary product leadership that's going to have them…”
Hays: Apple lacks commercial incentives to radically improve iPhone battery life
“The issue with them, if they massively improve their battery, that's a huge reason that people, you know, actually end up renewing their you know, buying a new device. So It's, they're sort of not the same incentive to be like, hey, let's, let's spend ten bill…”