Why Apple is now focusing on users, not units

“Across the last 20 years, Apple has shifted from selling Macs in a world dominated by Windows PCs to being a dominant global brand that services a vast installed base that’s more valuable, influential, and lucrative than Windows was at its peak,” Daniel Eran Dilger writes for AppleInsider. “Apple wants its investors to understand that, and is now challenging the media narrative that suggests it running an unsustainable race against various manufacturers churning out ever-increasing volumes of hardware units.”
“Apple’s historical quarterly unit sales reporting has given analysts and pundits data that they frequently interpret incorrectly,” Dilger writes. “In doing so, they obscure the company’s actual performance and distract from its real value and potential.”
“Going forward, Apple’s revenue-only reporting will still provide a clear picture of the overall health of each of its business segments — the same way that Microsoft, Samsung Electronics and other large companies with multiple lines of business report their quarterly performance without necessarily enumerating any units sold,” Dilger writes. “The shift puts a new focus on what is really the most valuable aspect of Apple’s global operations… Essentially, Apple doesn’t sell people units. It sells units of people on Apple.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Following many quarters of Apple’s admonitions to analysts to walk on their own, Apple has finally just kicked the crutch away. No pain, no gain.
As we wrote last week: We’ll gladly accept a nice AAPL discount sale that benefits not only smart investors but Apple’s buyback program as well. Tim Cook et al. are wise to clam up and let the manipulators and fools speciously talk down the stock in their fact-free echo chamber as loudly as possible before Apple reports all-time record holiday quarter earnings in January.
Eventually, the so-called analysts will wise up. As we all know, they’re always well behind the curve.
SEE ALSO:
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Poor news curation at Bloomberg, CNBC, Reuters created misleading iPhone supply chain panic – November 19, 2018
WSJ: Apple slashes production orders for all three new iPhone models – November 19, 2018
Misreading Apple’s supply chain and iPhone XR demand – November 15, 2018
Apple: Ignore the noise – November 14, 2018
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Apple stock: This is not a repeat of 2015-16 – November 14, 2018
iPhone XR production cuts not due to soft demand – analyst – November 10, 2018
Apple’s Asian suppliers fall on report of canceled iPhone XR production boost – November 6, 2018
Nikkei claims iPhone XR production cuts, Apple stock drops over 3% – November 5, 2018