Bart Yee on IDC: Apple's iPhone shipments are setting records left and right - 'IDC’s numbers are a little and a lot off depending on what they’re referencing: “Apple’s shipments are forecast to grow 6.1% YoY in 2025, up sharply from 3.9% in the last cycle.” “Apple is set to have a record year in 2025 with shipments forecast to cross 247 million units, thanks to the phenomenal success of its latest iPhone 17 series,” said Nabila Popal, senior research director with IDC’s Worldwide Quarterly Mobile Phone Tracker.” For 2024, IDC estimated 232.1M, a preliminary estimate Jan 12, 2025. I have not found any correction to that. If iPhone sales grew 6.1%, that puts it at 246.3M, a little off from 247.4M. Either the growth rate is actually 6.6% or the 2024 number was revised by IDC internally to 233.2M. Small potatoes. This number is more egregious: “This calendar year will not only be a record period for Apple in terms of shipments but also in value, which is forecast to exceed $261 billion, with 7.2% YoY growth in 2025.” This bugged me a lot and should have raised some eyebrows at IDC and here. Why? As I had pointed out a few days ago, CY2024 iPhone revenue was $200.619B. That’s a long ways from $261B, because $261B would represent 30% YoY growth!!!, not 7.2%. When I had calculated potential forecasted CY2025 iPhone revenues, based on Q1 FY2026 quarter’s 10% iPhone revenue growth as guided by Apple CFO Parekh, I came up with $216.5B, a 7.9% YoY growth. If we instead sub 7.2% growth, we should get $215.1B. I believe the $261B figure is an erroneous typo that should actually be closer to $216B instead!! I’d certainly love to to see $261B in annual iPhone revenue someday but it’s not CY2025, maybe end of year 2027 because that would require only 10% YoY revenue growth in 2026 and then 2027. Another cross check was taking $261B divide that by projected sales of 247.4M, giving an ASP of $1055, an astounding 19% rise from 2024’s $888. Given current and past robust sales of base model iPhone 17 & 16’s in 2025, it’s just not likely yet. If IFolds became a huge hit, maybe that’s possible into 2026 & 2027. I’ve sent an email to IDC to inquire about this typo or maybe miscalculation possibility.'
on Apple's Amar Subramanya has his work cut out for him - 'Investment thesis: The people running the Magnificent Seven (and a bunch of other great companies not growing quite as fast) are smarter than the journos writing about them. So whom should we believe? The Mag 7 need profits (or sometimes zero profits and massive growth of the business–see Amazon’s earlier days, for example), while the journos need eyeballs. So the CEOs are running their companies, looking for opportunities and hyper vigilant for disruptive innovations that could kill them. And the journos are desperate for controversy; when there is little, they employ the chicken little sky-is-falling strategy: Apple is the next Blackberry! Nvidia is the next Intel! AI is the next Internet bubble! These headlines are better at grabbing attention than ones that might better reflect reality: Apple is the next Apple. Nvidia is the next Nvidia. AI is the next transformative opportunity and will have many winners. These headlines fail because everyone knows they are highly likely to be true–why read what you already know? Investment opportunity: buy and hold, tune out the noise. We’ve all seen those articles, “If you had invested $10k in __________ 30 years ago, today you’d have made millions. A more accurate headline would be: If you had tuned out the noise 30 years ago and just sat there, you’d have made millions. That’s why so few people actually invest $10k in one stock for 3 decades; they have trouble tuning out the noise generated by journos who can’t make a living unless there is controversy. Trust the smartest people, not the cleverest writers.'
on Apple at $286.19: Another day, another record close - 'The PCMag article is from when Apple talked about the product. Their booth at the show today was showing it in action. See my latest post on Twitter for pix and comments. Search for @Graphex1'
on Apple at $286.19: Another day, another record close - 'https://www.pcmag.com/news/apple-thunderbolt-5-macs-ai-clusters-mlx'
on Apple at $286.19: Another day, another record close - 'Search for “ Apple demo’d a mini AI cluster” And it should pop up.'
on Apple at $286.19: Another day, another record close - 'I looked up neurlPS Roger is there a link to the demo? I couldn’t find one. With what you saw, does the demo make you think Apple is working on a rack mount server?'
on Apple at $286.19: Another day, another record close - 'Evening Darren, seems that way . . . good luck to you! I’ve got perhaps three more years to wind down my AAPL concentration to 25%. If I weren’t in a bind with state tax credits for a house restoration in a high tax state that can be clawed back if I become a non-resident, I’d have set up residency elsewhere, unloaded, and been happy paying the Fed max rate. When AAPL releases the iTime Machine, top of the list is to go back and tweak my tax planning strategies.'
on IDC: Apple's iPhone shipments are setting records left and right - 'Gregg, keep it simple. There is a metric called the PEG or price to earnings to growth ratio. This metric expresses what the market thinks the stock may do. Small numbers for PEG are better. finance.yahoo reports the statistics under “Statistics”, so they are readily available. Hope this helps.'
on Apple at $286.19: Another day, another record close - 'I wish it was me … I have an outstanding sell order at $289.80 … but it didn’t convert in AH which is always a bit of a lottery compared to normal market hours. 🙁'
on Apple at $286.19: Another day, another record close - 'In the market cap race NVIDIA is at $4.41 trillion. Apple is closing in on the top spot at $4.23 trillion and Alphabet is approaching the $4 trillion club at $3.81 trillion. Gemini 3 has given the share price quite a boost and looking at today’s headlines OpenAI is feeling the heat from Alphabet’s success. The company spiked to new all-time highs on Friday. Is Alphabet delivering a better AI product?'
on Loop Capital raises its Apple target $10 to $325 - 'Hi, Daniel. That certainly is the reason for the precipitous drop in late March, but was Apple all that vulnerable? The US market would hardly have been touched, and China owes a lot of its existing strength to Apple’s perennial presence there. I.e., it was always an overblown reaction at best. And Apple had begun dropping 3 months sooner, having retraced back almost to $200/share by mid-March. People conveniently forget the previous ~$260/share ATH hit in December, ‘24, which is almost exactly a mere 10% growth over that number almost a year later. Same company, the only difference being the underlying profitability is no longer masked like it was for the last year. At 80+, we don’t buy but only sell, so we have an excuse for not moving in that incredible buying opportunity. What’s everyone else’s?'
