John Konopka on TheStreet: The market is ripe for a foldable Apple iPhone - 'Having done some marketing (at a very small company) I respect people’s varied interests and their ability to hide them from me. 🙂 There could be a number of reasons that this works for some people. 10M in a year would be about 4 or 5 percent of iPhones sold last year. Some will be new customers, some will cannibalize other iPhones. Probably not much effect on the bottom line. It does something to satisfy people wanting Apple to do something new. It may also have a halo effect as people drop by an Apple Store to see the new thing and walk away with something else. Like with many Apple products, we probably need to look out 3 to 5 years to see the real effect of this product. I would guess it will start showing up as product placement in TV shows and movies as people want to show off the futuristic, hip new product. I wonder if the new Siri will get this treatment? Maybe when Timmy falls down a well he’ll as Siri to call Lassie.'
on TheStreet: The market is ripe for a foldable Apple iPhone - 'I just don’t see the job an oversized iPhone could do that I would make me shell out $2,000 plus tax. For the cost of a ‘foldable’ I could buy 6, maybe 7, shares of AAPL. In 4 years it’ll be time to upgrade that ‘foldable’ (another outlay of ~$1,000) and the 6/7 shares of AAPL will have split ~3:1, paid about $200 in dividends, and be trading at about $250per share. That’s too steep a price to pay to satisfy an emotional need, Veldon effect or not.'
on TheStreet: The market is ripe for a foldable Apple iPhone - 'David said “I’m sure Apple will sell a bunch of anything it makes. But will they sell enough to make a significant difference in the bottom line?“ A quick cocktail napkin analysis: Projections suggest 7-10M iPhone Ultra’s sold in the 2H 2026 year, then 10-12M for the first 3 quarters of 2027, coinciding with Apple’s Fiscal year or so. Maybe Apple opens preorders in October as the FY opens to build demand & push revenues into Q1? Initial production and inventory will be relatively limited so waits in the US, Europe and especially China may be lengthy. If we assume a conservative $2300 ASP per unit, at a conservative 8.5M sold in Q1 FY2027, that’s $19.5B added to Q1 iPhone revenues. Consider shaving 20% for cannibalized Pro model sales and you get a net $15.6B in additional Q1 iPhone revenues. It’s not clear how many sales will be Android conquest/switcher sales but I anticipate 10-15% (850K-1.28M) of Ultra sales to be such, most being in China. With the split intro schedule pushing the base iPhone 18, Air & 18e models to next year, it will be hard to estimate total iPhone revenue in Q1 YoY but consider that an Ultra sale represents 2.5-3x base iPhone 18 sale and 2x a Pro Model sale. If we parcel out the remaining 11M sales over the three quarters as 5-3-3, at the same $2300 ASP, that’s a total of net $9.2B, 5.5B and $5.5B added to Q2, Q3 and Q4 respectively. Assuming Apple finishes FY2026 with at least 19.6% iPhone revenue increase to ~$250B, the Total FY2027 iPhone additional revenue would be nearly $36B higher revenues with Ultra Foldables added and status quo on the rest, moving to $286B and “only” a +14% YoY comparison to 2026. This result would come in the face of 2027’s continued memory costs inflation, geopolitical uncertainty, and off and on foreign exchange issues. So David, would you take low to mid double digit iPhone revenue growth in an “already mature smartphone market”? I could see Apple sales volume rising to 255-260M sales by end of FY2027, and ASP’s rising to over $1050-1100 giving $267B total exactly $286B iPhone revenues, matching my estimate above. Hopefully by Q1 FY2028 we will start seeing AI spending fever begin to slow as ROI becomes much more of an expectation than spending, and memory prices for mobile DRAM starts coming down. If Apple passes some of that savings back to consumer prices, watch out for even more increased sales volumes. Oh, did I mention continued boring low to mid-teens (13-15%) Services revenues growth and sell all you can Mac revenues? No wonder Rothschild upped their price target. Let’s get to $350 first and go from there, shall we?'
on Rothschild catapults its Apple target $140 to $400 - 'I watched the interview live. CNBC buried the “lead” before the interview by saying the analyst was a big fan of the foldable phone and barely mentioned his upgrade for the stock. And of course the stock price for today didn’t react with any excitement. So the downgrade of Apple Stock by Jeffries was big news but this upgrade barely gets mentioned in comparison. By the way isn’t that price target familiar? Several other analysts have talked about 400 per share. At least before the pullback after earnings a couple of weeks ago. So maybe the story for the stock is intact. Just needs repeating.'
on Rothschild catapults its Apple target $140 to $400 - 'The analyst was interviewed on CNBC on the price target upgrade and his excitement over the forthcoming foldable iPhone: https://apple.news/Am2ZHlc6aThmkfXW0A6bskw'
on Rothschild catapults its Apple target $140 to $400 - 'Someone at Rothschild got a subscription to PED 3.0'
on Rothschild catapults its Apple target $140 to $400 - 'Agreed, it’s coming along nicely and do you think Apple is ever gonna stop? Hell no!!!! That’s not how they roll.'
on TheStreet: The market is ripe for a foldable Apple iPhone - 'I think it’s maybe like the original iPhone concept. Why would I want that? Then after actually using one, “Oh! I see.” Will it add something that it turns out that I value enough to offset the added size, weight and cost? I doubt it, but I’ll wait and see.'
on TheStreet: The market is ripe for a foldable Apple iPhone - 'What is the market for foldable phones? I have tried to think of a reason to use one, but I’m coming up empty. Is it simply new tech for the sake of being new?'
on Apple offers Epic 5% to 15% - 'Yeah, but what happens if those major investors vote no-confidence? I’m -guessing- that the investors in Epic aren’t the same as the sheeple on Spacex’s board… 🙂 Presumably the agreements for those investments have a lot of specifics on how the investors and the board interact. (The small company I worked for had a couple outside investors with shareholder agreement. That agreement eventually ended up being tested in court when the outside investors challenged the founder. A few of us employee shareholders ended up with the controlling difference; the other 2 sides each had about 48% of the company. After that lawsuit was settled, the company went back to the big-name law firm that drafted the ambiguous agreement, and the law firm settled.)'
on Germany removes a brick from Apple's walled garden - 'I guess the view of the EU and European governments is that if you can’t compete against Apple and other US tech companies, then pedantically regulate them. Because to enable Europe to actually compete and innovate would require a great deal of soul searching and soul crushing political and cultural changes.'
on Apple and Trump guys butt heads over Chinese chips - 'Apple didn’t build its supply chain on low-cost labour. It built its supply chain on world-leading manufacturing expertise and capacity, and timely decision-making, planning and implementation. Clowns like Lutnick clearly have no comprehension of either the complexity or scale of Apple’s supply and manufacturing chain, and he should stick to what he does best: corrupt dealings and ripping off widows.'
