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Originally Posted by Penforhire
Apple doesn't play in the low-price low-margin market. The 5C surprised many because it is still very expensive. Based on sales and profit I don't really see how Apple's bacon is in any danger.
Oddly enough, while I am also impressed with many of their non-phone products, their revenue is somewhere north of 50% from iPhones. They are now a phone company, or at least their fortunes rise and fall mostly from their phones.
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Sticking all your apples in one basket is dangerous. If there's a rotten one in there, you could be in big problems. (Read: If Apple makes a mistake that causes the iPhone to not sell well anymore, there's going to be trouble. They're rich... but they were rich in the 90's too. Still they almost keeled over.)
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Can you believe the crazy margin they get on memory up-sells in iPads? I'm a fan and I still think their price for larger memory is usurious.
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Memory is the one thing they make their margins on. Memory costs *NOTHING* nowadays. My current computer has 8GB RAM. My next one will have 16GB, possibly even 32GB because it can, and compared to what I paid for this 8GB 6 years ago, it'll be free. (Not to mention what I paid for 128MB 15 years ago.)
We've seen SSD's drop from $400 for 32GB to $100 for 128GB. Memory cards are gigantic; in the Netherlands, it's difficult to get SD-cards below 4GB. Shipping them in an envelope is more expensive than the card itself.
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They are still sitting on an absurd mountain of cash.
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Yes, but everything and everyone can go broke at some point. Apple almost fell over in '97, having been rich before. Who thought Microsoft would buy Nokia as if it's nothing; the biggest phone manufacturer that ever existed, at some point in time at least?
Nokia was like the King, Queen and Emperor of the phone market, but they got complacent. Then smartphones caught on, and *boom*. They're about dead within 5-6 years. The same can happen to Apple.