Apple is at the first major cross-roads since the passing of its late co-founder Steve Jobs 12
years ago. It finds itself still largely dependent on the product lines and businesses that Jobs left behind. Its Vision Pro has received mixed reviews on launch, while it is also facing several other headwinds including a major lawsuit against what the DOJ claims are its anticompetitive practices.
Apple managed to capture lightning in a bottle, twice. First by making a better Walkman, and then again by making that device a phone with internet access. They were able to leverage that success to revitalize their computer hardware business and act as a platform for selling accessories, and all of that made them very successful.
But the stock market doesn’t care about past success, it cares about growth, and without a major new, or buzz worthy product, investors might start to turn against Apple. Problem is, they have ridden the iPod horse about as far as it can go. They tried putting wheels on it, but that failed, and the jury is still out on whether tying one to your face will work out or not.
Yep. Doesn’t matter how healthy or stable a company is… when infinite growth is no longer feasible, investors would rather pick the bones clean than let it be.
Why does a company that has already achieved it’s success need investment? When company potential is how we value society, this is an inevitable end result.
APPL is second only to MSFT by market cap. So far, the stock market doesn’t care.
Yeah, but investors really don’t care about the price of a stock, they care about how much the price moves once they own it.
It’s the inherent problem with publicly owned companies. Even if you perfected a mode of profit, unless you improve upon perfection next quarter you’re in hot shit.
You can only squeeze so much profit out of any one gimmick, after that the only way to mimic growth is by cutting labour costs, and eventually diverting investment funding into profit for shareholders.
Not necessarily. Investors also care about dividends. Those tend to be the people who hold on long term. Blue chips, as a class of stock, are all about companies that don’t make big moves in price and pay out in dividends. They’re older companies that have built their product line, and while they still do R&D on new ones, they only do that to make sure they don’t get left behind.
Fuck you WAP phones existed. Blackberries existed.
And they sucked ass by only half-assing the usability