From Patently Apple’s “Apple Analyst Ming-Chi Kuo’s Crystal Ball isn’t working right lately” posted Sunday:
Apple analyst Ming-Chi Kuo is changing his mind a lot lately. In early December we reported that Kuo had changed his own forecast for mini-LED display volume in Apple products quite dramatically. On another front back in August, Kuo forecast that Apple car would be ready between 2023 and 2025. Then a report from Reuters about the Apple car possibly being read in and around 2024 rocked the market. That seemed to rock Kuo too who now all of a sudden is downplaying his own prediction about the arrival of an Apple car.
According to MacRumors, Kuo has decided that the arrival is now between 2025-2027. More specifically, Kuo’s report to clients stated:
“We predicted in a previous report that Apple will launch Apple Car in 2023–2025 […] However, our latest survey indicates that the current development schedule of Apple Car is not clear, and if development starts this year and everything goes well, it will be launched in 2025–2027 at the earliest. Due to changes in the EV/self-driving market and Apple’s high-quality standards, we would not be surprised if Apple Car’s launch schedule is postponed to 2028 or later.”
Kuo added that the market is “overly bullish” about the Apple Car’s launch schedule, and he has advised investors to avoid buying Apple Car-related stocks at this time.
Could Kuo’s hypocrisy ring any louder? It was Kuo who was first in being “overly bullish” with his original 2023-2025 forecast just four months back. Perhaps Kuo just didn’t like the limelight being taken away by the Reuters report.
Kuo should stick to his shorter-term forecasts where he’s been fairly accurate because no one, including Kuo, could point to 2028 with any accuracy when it comes to an Apple project. It’s just ridiculous.
The MacRumors link has two more paragraphs of direct quotes from Kuo’s note:
The market has high expectations for Apple Car. Still, we remind investors that although Apple has a variety of competitive advantages, it is not always successful in new business. For example, Apple failed to enter the smart speaker market. The demand for HomePod and HomePod mini were lower than expected, and the development of new smart speaker models had been temporarily suspended. The competition in the EV/self-driving car market is fiercer than that for smart speakers, so we think it’s perilous to jump to the conclusion that Apple Car will succeed.
If Apple Car wants to succeed in the future, the key success factor is big data/AI, not hardware. One of our biggest concerns about Apple Car is that when Apple Car is launched, the current self-driving car brands will have accumulated at least five years of big data and be conducive to deep learning/AI. How does Apple, a latecomer, overcome this lagging gap?
My take: Note that MacRumors, when quoting Kuo, dropped its usual “reliable analyst” honorific.
See also: How reliable is Ming-Chi Kuo?
Hackable AV’s would be a disaster. Apple’s has the best security, a big advantage.
“The best time to buy AAPL was yesterday. If you missed that opportunity you should buy it today. And if you couldn’t make up your mind to buy today then you should buy tomorrow. Then forget you own it”.
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Corollary automotive sensors for vehicle performance and control (powertrain, suspension, steering, traction) are well established but it is unknown if Apple has partnered with companies like Denso, Bosch, etc. for implementation.
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Corollary – the need for internal and near ultra fast connectivity for passengers and local area position interaction (other cars, objects, lanes, entrances and exits, etc.) – ✅ check! And coming. The UWB U1 chip, iBeacons and M1X and succeeding iterations can provide the computing and connectivity power that future, not present systems need for occupants and situational awareness.
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How does Apple address this? With its own custom, more specialized 5G modem and antenna designs. In the 5 years of the Qualcomm deal, Apple can spend plenty of time learning and building its own mobile device modems but also expand use applications into vehicular as well as residential and business., each with different performance and usage parameters. That deal runs to 2025 with an option to 2027, but IMO may not preclude Apple from building its own for vehicular uses.
Will it be the equivalent of putting a Mac Mini or iPad Pro into a car?
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Similarly, the battery “breakthroughs” that have been connected with AppleCar ™ will need further development, testing, validation, real world use, recycling and iteration after iteration. Tie this in with green energy production and storage for distribution for Apple facilities and maybe even into home solar and one can see the disruptive possibilities.
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Your invitation to make himself available for an Apple 3.0 zoom call is spot on. Because then he will have the opportunity to utilize the PED subscribers to upgrade his current “survey” base to a more understanding cadre of sophisticated Apple shareholders as the knowledge base I observe in each and every comment on the PED site is quite impressive.
This transition will take 5-10-15-20 years as previously alluded to by blog commenters. But the 25-40 y/o demographic may well accelerate this transition as the boomer generation transitions out (sorry friends, a reality). Assuming stable recovered economies, steady will to improve air quality, and shifting ideas of vehicle ownership vs trip usage, Apple could well be stepping in at a more accepting and optimal market time in 4-6 years. As usual, let others take the risks of opening up the market, and then Apple disrupts that market with products they have been working on for years.
Apple plans long term and has the patience to get it right. These virtues have made it what it is today and what it will be in the future.
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