Don’t say they didn’t warn you. Apple posted a year-over-year decline in revenue today, the first time the company’s failed to grow its business in 13 years. It brought in $50.6 billion in revenue for the second quarter of 2016, and $10.5 billion in profits. That compares with $58 billion in revenue and $13.6 billion in profits during this period last year, a drop of 13 percent for the revenue.
Apple isn’t doing badly, it is still one of the most valuable and profitable companies in the world. But it hasn’t found a new blockbuster product to pick up the slack as iPhone sales have slowed in many parts of the globe.
All product categories are down too – iPhone down 16%, iPad down 19%, Mac down 12% – but obviously, they’re still selling an amazing number of each of these. No, Apple isn’t doomed – anyone who says so based on these numbers is an idiot – but it does show that Apple has been unable to find the ‘next big thing’ after the iPhone (for now!).
Um, no, smartphones have just reached the point when they are good enough and a 12 month upgrade cycle has become worthless if your smartphone is less than 36 months old. The market has become saturated and flatlined. PCs reached this point roughly five years ago.
I don’t expect a next big thing any time soon, unless we’re talking about the merger of PCs and smartphones but technology is not yet there.
Edited 2016-04-26 21:24 UTC
Actually I see Microsoft far closer to that point than Apple.
Perhaps, though I’m not certain such a merger is a good idea at the moment. I think we’d need more efficiency in X86 processors when used with smaller batteries to effectively have a phone that’ll even last a day. Also, legacy software must be allowed to run on the phone if this is ever to happen in the near future.
Windows phones use ARM processors. I expect to see ARM on Windows laptops and even low powered desktops within a few years.
Continuum really only needs to support mainstream applications such as word processing and playing videos
Edited 2016-04-28 03:39 UTC
The next big thing is not a smartphone
Well, this was the situation Nokia was in, in 2009 when they paniced. They were making a solid profit, but not increasing.
Exactly. And look what their panic got them: bought out by Microsoft, and with their device usage still on the downward spiral.
[If at times the Company deserves it]. All of the Industry is cooling. Because themselves, the economy, decaying Trust.
Apple has a ridiculously good 2nd quarter last year. Their sales jumped up from $45bn to $58bn. That was an abberation. $50bn is still loads. Yes, it was a bit of a miss, but Q2 2015 was something special.
That’s an excellent observation too. And probably closer to reality (despite my venting in another post).
I’m hardly an Apple fan boy but I do have quite a few products, Mac Mini, MBP, AppleTV, and iPads. I also have Windows laptops, Linux hosts, and Android phones. I pick the products that work best for me. For the last 7 or 8 years, that’s been Mac for laptops, iPad for tablet for ebooks and studying, Android for tablets for casual use and games, Android for phone, and Android Wear for a watch.
I say all this to set the backdrop for my comments.
For the last 6 months or so, my Apple TV has seen less and less use, despite the Apple TV being the method I used to cut the (cable) cord. I’d buy season passes for the TV shows I liked, and would rent and buy movies from the iTunes Store as well, all to watch through the Apple TV. For the last 6+ months I can’t watch a single TV episode or movie without getting “iTunes is temporarily unavailable” in the middle of the show. Netflix on the Apple TV works, Netflix and other streaming options on Roku works. Only iTunes and Apple TV is having the problem. I just about have to download everything on my MBP and watch it using my local computer instead.
I use Dropbox and not iCloud. And wherever possible, I avoid Apple cloud services for day to day things. I have a few small things there, but only things I can live without when (note, that’s not an if) it goes away or is unavailable.
The new Mac Mini will go into a deep sleep if not used every day and will not wake up the monitor. I can remotely log in, access everything on the drive, but it will not turn the screen back on. I have to reboot it.
Apple is moving things towards iOS and away from Mac OS X. In the process they hide (or remove) some of the functionality choices that used to be available in Mac OS X. And they’ve made things more and more unstable along the way. Not to mention the more “kiddie” like, almost cartoonish icons and the “flat” look, neither of which I’m a fan of.
A new mid-level MBP (13, retina) routinely has problems with web pages that hang in the middle of page loads or won’t load right away. Sometimes it has a hard time establishing network connections forcing wifi to be disabled and re-enabled. And the most recent updates changed something and now I am unable to print to my laser printer. In fact, in troubleshooting I removed the printer and now I can’t add it back. Not sure if it’s related to the bonjour, DNS, mDNS, and related mess that’s been causing grief for a while or not, but it gets annoying having intermittent problems like that.
My point for all of this is that Apple seems to have lost their near obsessive and fanatical attention to detail and QA that used to drive things while Steve was alive and active at Apple. Like or hate what he did to products, you had to admit that much of the releases while he was fully in control seemed to get better and more thoroughly QA tested before public release. Of course there are always exceptions, but I’m referring to the general trend. It was funny, while he was sick, you could almost see the quality difference in what was released when he was active and when he wasn’t.
The end result is, at least in my opinion, that not only has market penetration probably peaked, but people are also tired of dealing with the idiosyncrasies that are continually popping up. I know I am. One of the reasons I have the MBPs is because (for me, and how I work), they just worked. I didn’t have to constantly adjust, tweak, or fiddle with things to keep them working. I turn them on, go to work. My efficiency was much improved. And that trend is sadly changing for the worse as I have to spend more time finding work arounds or fixing things as they pop up.
While I don’t have plans for any technology purchase any time soon, I’m still in a good spot for my device lifecycles, when it is time to buy something, just like I’m more likely to buy a Roku 4 than a new Apple TV, I’m also more likely to upgrade Apple devices to non-Apple ones for the next go around. Perhaps others are too.
Edited 2016-04-26 22:31 UTC
Thanks for the fresh user perspective, gsyoungblood
“people are also tired of dealing with the idiosyncrasies that are continually popping up. I know I am.”
Platform Stability, asked by a YOUNG user. Ultimately, Who makes Market Research for these HUGE Companies?
I’m not an Apple user, I just had an iPhone 3GS once and loved it for the level of perfection it offered.
You can’t underestimate Steve Job’s legacy, he was driven to make the user experience straight forward and he paid attention to detail as you said. He would sometimes “torture” employees who didn’t get it right, and he wouldn’t have released a product even with minor annoyances. I happen to agree with his visual taste, but the important thing is that he had one and didn’t just try to comply with the fad of the day.
Someone who is obsessed about details and has taste (although that is debatable of course) can give a huge edge to a company, especially if he is the CEO.
As a Linux user I’d like Steve Jobs to return from the dead, because he kept pushing us all forward.
BANKS are not automated, We are their cashiers now. And most of Us hate it.
And here comes my biggest claim to the established Software Houses: BEING VISIBLE.
Yes, every work-around, help look-up [that was not needed the day before for the same task], check-list, unnecessary notification, non asked publicity, new layer over the already n layers hidden option, option retracted ‘for my own good’, incompatible tweak to the standards… and interminable etc. etc. etc.
WHY do You Companies makes Us users expend our life on so miserable MERCHANDISING nuances?
[The big question for the Software Houses here IS NOT why FOSS hasn’t taken the Desktop; IS why FOSS has not disappeared from the Desktop Scenario: I’m here, using a table, a knife and so little more, instead of the several ‘automated kitchens’ all around. Well, I’m quite f****d up with your interminable nuancing. Of going back, and back, and back [To put on a line of work-around, then off, then on], of saying no, and no, and no, Thanks…]
[I just want: To turn on the thing, do my [home]work, turn off the thing and go kiss my girl…]
<VeryStrongGuitarNotes>
Yo solo quiero caminar
como corre la lluvia del cristal
como corre el rÃo hacia la mar
</VeryStrongGuitarNotes>
In memoriam of Paco de Lucía
For issues like these ones arising in the Kernel.
😉
Amen to all of that.
I’m starting to encourage as many people as possible that use Apple products to email Tim Cook at [email protected] (please don’t spam him with hate or useless emails!!!) telling him that if quality of software and hardware continues the downward trend of reliability that you WILL be moving off of Apple products.
I also encourage people to tell Apple that soldering the RAM and storage option onto the motherboard is also something that is driving you away from Apple products.
If we get enough people emailing his email address with these messages he WILL have to sit up and take notice and take action. So please join me in doing so at least once a week and put it on your calendar to remind yourself with his email address there so you just have to tap or click on it to open up a new email.
I’m also creating an email signature that specifically says what I said above so I don’t have to type it out each time. Or you might want to put it in Notes or something.
Again, if enough people email and complain and quality and soldering RAM and storage on the motherboard he WILL have to do something about it. Losing customers is a sure way to lose your job and your BIG stock options. I do believe he cares. I think he just got out of touch with the real world and so has Johnny I’ve. And I feel that in losing Steve Jobs we lost an advocate for us, the little people which I feel in a way, Steve Jobs never lost.
And toward what? In the ultrabook market at least, every possible alternative also has fixed ram and storage… and battery, for that matter. In other markets I agree, but don’t bother doing this if you’re going to talk about the Macbook Air.
As much as I appreciate your points, and appreciate the driven focus of Steve Jobs, please don’t try to rewrite history.
The soldered RAM and limited drive options started under his watch. The transition from open to closed, walled garden that is so Apple right now, also started under Steve Jobs watch.
I respect the man, his vision, and his drive. But that respect does not mean blind admiration.
While it was convenient for him, when he needed to save his beloved Apple, he jumped on the open band wagon. The BSD core of NeXTstep which became the foundation for OS X led directly into Darwin and embracing open source to a strong degree. Riding on those coat tails he got a lot of technical adopters to fill in the gap and prop up the products on the computer front while other products were worked out and delivered.
Once the company was saved, adhering to “Open” became lip service. Remember FaceTime was supposed to be an open protocol? I think parts of it have been published but I don’t believe enough has to truly write a cross platform FaceTime client. Which is a pity. And there are other examples.
Migration to the soldered components is just the natural progression of retreating from the “open” nature that was used to rejuvenate Apple when it was dying. Apple can’t truly lock down OS X like they’d like, and like they have in iOS, so I’m sure that is one of the drives to move computing to iOS from OS X in general. After all, in iOS Apple makes money from every software sold. On OS X, you can buy software directly from vendors and skip Apple, and Apple doesn’t get their commission then.
So, while I do appreciate much of Apple, and a lot of what Steve Jobs has done and accomplished with Apple, let’s keep things accurate. Some of what we dislike about Apple now was started under Steve’s watch, and no doubt has been part of his planned playbook continued under Tim.
That said, I agree with you. If enough people make enough public noise and email to Tim and in the press about the worsening state of quality or dissatisfaction with soldered components, then (hopefully) follow through with NOT buying new Apple products, then they will have no choice but to rethink that strategy.
Last, but not least, to be fair. I haven’t looked closely, but given the dimensions of some of the systems, soldered components were as much a requirement to make things as thin as they’ve become. That said, I’d welcome an extra 1/4″ of an inch or so of thickness to accommodate upgradable memory and drive.
I think this is a disease affecting the entire industry, this belief that if you make everything into Fisher Price toys, with Idiocracy levels of dumbed down UIs, they can somehow get more users…and its not gonna work.
What they are gonna have to accept is you really can’t dumb these things down anymore without crippling them and causing user frustration when they have to jump through flaming hoops or mounds of CLI horseshit just to access settings that they “in their infinite wisdom” decided you didn’t need.
I have a lot of customers staying on previous versions of everything from Android to OSX to Windows NOT because they don’t like the new hardware, its because they don’t like how Fisher Price the new OSes have become, but until they accept these are mature markets and there isn’t some huge hidden demographic they can sell to? I have a feeling the numbers for everybody will keep going down because folks just don’t like the new stuff coming down the pipe, like one of my customers said “this looks like something I’d give my 8 year old”.
“I turn them on, go to work.” Quite often surges the conversation about why Win7 is so resilient to Market Share Loss. This is the one.
The way Red Hat handles it?
Actually, with the new direction windows has with bash availability, power shell, and a few other features, I will be giving it a try to see how it goes. I’m still very much a command line user and drop to the shell quite often to work on things, whether Linux, Mac, or even Windows. The Unix under the hood of Mac is one of the big things I like about it.
I work in an organization that has over 10,000 computers and yours may run without fail but we get lots of calls from people where that isn’t the case. Out of the eight OSs that I have used, not counting main or mini-frames, Windows is the LEAST reliable of the lot. That’s MY personal experience.
Well, our computer count is only in the hundreds, but my experience is the same as yours. We’ve got Windows and OS X (no Linux save our Synology NAS) and Windows fails far, far more often.
Ok, admitting it, after decades, Windows still the s!##!^& toddler
Couldn’t have put it better if I’d tried.
Is their diligent work on a validated [and validating] chain tool, which keep high my hopes on Them
Also, on defending the almost indefensible, They where for decades, until the recent ‘Cloud’ Fiasco, the biggest target.
On being the most open ecosystem [and hopping they keep on and don’t become an iOS-look-alike+merchandizing], they suffered a lot from ‘friendly fire’. They keep learning fast about protocol-ization of shared resources -or virtual-ization for legacy-.
As phones become more PC like, so do phone upgrade cycles. Double-edged sword, this Post- PC thing. Having said that, if Apple is doomed after posting those numbers, other phone manufacturers are already dead and buried.
“Double-edged sword, this Post- PC thing.” Indeed. More unnatural to phones, which should be icons of reliability, then resilience.
Maybe asking for a slower pace of change is not that bad idea, Gan17.
Most of the other big phone makers such as Samsung, ZTE, Huawei and Lenovo are (minor) subsidiaries of much larger conglomerates. Many of these phone makers also make and sell phone components. None of these companies is overly reliant on selling their own phone brands. So they are far less vulnerable than Apple.
Apple has only one successful product – the iPhone ecosystem. Even their tablets and Macbook Air are just scaled up phones. They literally have no other mainstream products to support the company if the iPhone fails.
The Macbook Air is as much a scaled up iPhone as the Nokia Lumia range are shrunken desktops
Sand castle empire
I’m sure Apple will pick up after the iPhone 7 is released. I’ve never been a fan of Apple mobile products, not so much the hardware but the OS itself. Now I am basing my experince from the only iPhone I have ever owned,the 4S and most recently the iPad Pro. I promptly returned the 4S and was lucky enough to get my hands on a Nokia N950, in which I still have and periodically use as a remote terminal for starting and monitoring processes. A few months later, I also bought the Nokia 808 Pureview. Though Symbian felt outdated the OS contained many features simply not available for iOS. The same with the N950, I was able to run apps in the background, I had access to a file-system and manager, I was ablem to stream a video to my TV while still being able to use the phone, I had access to a scripting language which is extremely important to me as I automate many recurring tasks, especially reports. Which yes, I use a phone to do because these things are basically computers now. In fact my new Nexus 6P is my work computer, how, using a USB C hub, I connect a monitor, mouse and keyboard to it. As my firm mostly uses dumb terminals and Chrome Box’s to connect to both our Unix and Citrix servers for Windows applications, using the Nexus 6P was actually an upgrade. I have a Citrix client installed, though I really don’t have any need for it as Office HD, a derivative of OpenOffice that was completely rewritten and optimized for Android handles all of my Office suite needs. Especially since it has full scripting, database and advanced macro capabilities. I have access to my firms secure NAS and am able to mount my remote directories as local folders using BusyBox Linux additions. I have enabled multi-window support in Android 6, which took all of a minute to do, you literally have to just comment in a variable and than reboot. I have a Xterminal installed so I can use all of my firms Unix based applications and utilities, etc. The list really just goes on and on, the iPhone in comparison can’t do any of this.
Now I fully realize that I can’t expect Apple to provide me with a similar experince but the sheer amount of missing features in iOS is almost overwhelming. I didn’t fully understand the scope of this until I bought an iPad Pro, I was actually dumbfounded to find that even the most basic of features were simply not there. Not just that but the amount of compromises that had to be made to use it as a daily work device were just to many to simply ignore.
You can argue that the iPad Pro, even though Apple claims it can be used as a laptop is still just a mobile device running a mobile OS however if Android can offer these things, I don’t see why iOS can’t. Even trying to connect an external monitor was simply a bad experience, neither the resolution or the aspect radio of my monitor was supported, I couldn’t extend the desktop to make use of both displays, just mirroring, the desktop DPI was enormous with no way to set a custom one, something that is easily done in Android as well as extending the desktop using an app called Second Screen. I couldn’t run a single app I had installed in the background without the OS pausing it. Which meant using a terminal was out of the question as I have one up and running with multiple tabs opened to different internal servers, running in the background for the entire work day. So on and so on.
The whole point of this commemt was to say that I think more and more people are coming to the realization that Apple mobile devices are missing a lot of functionalities. There is also more competition than ever now with Windows hybrids, that simply offer better features and value for the money.
Take the new Samsung TabPro S form instance, it’s as thin and light as the iPad Pro, offers the same battery life, is just as powerful, includes the keyboard and now even the stylus for $900. That’s a savings of $400 for a similar spec’d iPad Pro with all of the necessary prepherials. I’m sure there are still plenty of people that thinks the iPad Pro is better as their fans of Apple in general but as a rational person who requires more than what iOS has to offer, I can’t help but think that it’s simply a complete waste of money.
The magic was in having a job and not a cook!
Many iLovers will start leaving the ship.
Except, what do we go to that offers the integrated experience Apple once had? Android? Windows10 and Mobile? I suspect many iLovers, as you call them, will hold on and hope they buckle down and improve things. iOS 9 and the updates to OS X are, at least, promising. I’ve been dealing with Windows 10 for a few days and I already want to tear my hair out. I’ll hold on to my Macbook Air, thanks.
Fascinating… You say integrated experience, I say vendor lock-in walled garden.
🙂
I’d hardly consider OS X a walled garden. Or iCloud which supports standard calDAV and cardDAV, along with iMap with all server details easy to find on Apple’s own website. iOS is a locked down platform, but that’s the only one. The integration outweighs the lock.
Edited 2016-04-27 16:43 UTC
Wonder if the recent surge in “Snow Leopard” capable mac prices on auction sites like ebay is some kind of response by the long time apple users?
I guess I’m the only one in existence that had more problems with Snow Leopard than any other OS X release. Mind you, I think the last version of SL I dealt with was 10.6.3. It was bad enough to actually get me to use Windows 7 until Lion came out.
Was lion the one where they introduced the ugly scrollbars?
That’s what happens when you all but ignore the OSX side of things. Each iteration of OSX seems to lack more and more of the pleasing aesthetics that it once had as well as it’s user friendliness. One Steve Jobs died, the folks at apple took that as carte blanche to muck with and ruin OSX. and that’s to say nothing about the developer-unfriendly stance apples has towards iOS developers.
In America if a company is not on the path to infinite growth, it’s dead.
Most bizarre things occurs on mature markets forced to re-capitalize instead of dividend release. Should be forbidden from that financial behavior.
Once the bottled soda beverages reached maturity, incursioned on drinking water, distorting both markets to no avail. [small amounts of ‘a very particular édulcorant’ on more than one Trademark -as a ‘competitive edge’, as example].
Here We have a ‘Zelig’ IT Industry trying to be Bank, Academy, TV, Radio, Newspaper, Taxi-Dispatcher [and soon Taxi-Driver], Typewriter, Photo Studio, Chat Board, etc. etc. etc.
Danger, Will Robinson!!
I’m glad I’m not a stockholder.
sure…. if you were an apple stockholder over the last 15 years i don’t think you’d be very upset about their performance.
i was offered apple shares at a nice price back in the mid-90’s. I only had $2k in my bank account and would have probably gone late on my rent and bills if i would have invested then. i had to pass, knowing i might regret it, b/c I had a feeling Jobs was coming back and even believed that either BeOS or OpenStep would be the new apple OS, and that small portable media device (iPod) would be the next big thing. I was kinda smart/lucky in my guesses back then.
I should have. Regret avenue. My investment in 1997 could be worth near 200k dollars now.
1997 – $0.59/share
2016 – $109.90/share
That would have turned $1k into $186k minus fees/taxes.
Are you taking into account the 7 for 1 share split, plus dividends? You’d have had a lot more money.
no i didn’t do any of that, i don’t have financial skills. just future telling 😉
“…It is now easier to hack the US defence system than get a DVD on to an iPad.”
;D
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/apr/27/a-brief-guide-to-…
The iSky is falling! The iSky is falling!
Does that make it an iCrash?
Remove last year’s crazy big sales of the iPhone 6 and look at the numbers for iPhone sales from the last five years.
Without that year’s totals, you can graph the last five years of sales and it is almost a straight line (at an angle) in the up directory.
The iPhone 6 shows that there was a HUGE pent up demand for a large profile iPhone. Once that was met the normal increase in sales from year to year went back to normal. That’s all that shows.
There is nothing to change other than looking for another area of pent up demand. Uh, like the new iPhone SE which Apple is not able to keep up with demand.
Next year when the profits are shown it will show a reduced average price for iPhones due to this new huge wave of users who have been wanting a (mostly) up to date iPhone with a 4″ display.
Like the iPhone 6 the numbers will be high. The next year will be like this year and people will still be short sighted and not look at the obvious. These are just one time hit the bullseye arrows with iPhones finding pent up demand.
Unless someone knows of another pent up demand other than a cheap piece of crap phone that doesn’t cost anything and it prints out money, I just don’t see another poster year for Apple in HUGE sales like that.
What I see them doing, at least for iPhones, is going back to the continued increase year by year of sales until … who knows when it will end but it hasn’t ended yet and probably won’t for maybe five to ten years. No I’m not wrong about this. Save this post and put it in front of my face five years from now and if I’m wrong, I’ll admit it. But I’m pretty damn sure that I’m right.
The iPhone 7 will be an interesting phone if they come with dual cameras. Quite a few people that care about picture quality will want to buy that phone so maybe that is the next big iPhone after this year’s 4″ phone.
Then then is Watch 2. If that brings wireless with cell phone (but not cell data because it would require too much battery) plus a much faster processor and maybe thinner and with more sensors that they haven’t talked about … Then I think that could sell a lot more than the original Apple Watch did.
We still have 4 to 6 years before the Apple Car which I could afford if I didn’t eat and didn’t pay my mortgage…
People actually wanting to support their artist, actually buy vinyl [a knee bending here, please].
Such is the mess at all things digital!