Gregg Thurman on Flying to Toulouse, biking to Bordeaux - '” it’s unclear if Chinese or now India OEM’s will have the stomach to reenter the lower price tiers market again” If they do re-enter the cheap handset market again, it will only be after they have rebuilt their respective balance sheets. By then, the consumer may have been weaned off cheap smartphone expectations.'
on Postcard from Toulouse - 'Apple closed at $337, down 8/10th of 1%, on trading volume at 1:15 PM PDT of 31 M, which is quite low. I consider this a breather. It’s only 18.7% to $400/share, or 15.8% from yesterday’s new ATH…. I’m thinking we hit that within half a year, and keep going….'
on Premarket: Apple is green - 'Approaching the end of the trading day and McDonald’s is off about $13 or over 5% on concerns about the prospects for flat revenue and margin pressure. All four major indexes are in the red with the Russell 2000 small cap index off more than 1.50%. Apple is currently down $3.42 or 1.01% at $336.34. That’s after reaching $345.34 yesterday and establishing a new all-time high. These days do happen!'
on Flying to Toulouse, biking to Bordeaux - 'A very gloomy Q2 2026 report by IDC, especially if you are not Apple, Samsung, or Huawei. Based on sales alone, those 3 grew, especially at the premium end, while a major part of Samsung and most Chinese makers anchored at the market’s low end are seeing price hikes, complete and intentional abandonment of low price tiers, and difficulty maintaining profit margins through the memory cost transition. IDC estimates global smartphone sales for 2026 will drop to just over 1 billion units, the drop almost entirely from Android. Even though they forecast Apple be down about -1.6%, I believe Apple will be flat to +1.5% on sales to ~250-255M depending on how the split introduction cycle works out for Q4. And notice the Foldables market – without Apple’s iPhone Duo entry, Android Foldables were headed for a double digit decline. As it is, Apple is expected to take 25% share by end of 2026 w/5M+ sales if not production capacity constrained, and then 40%+ share of all Foldables (not just Folds) market share, roughly 9M of IDC’s estimate of 22.6M in 2027 (I think closer to 10M out of 22-23M, eating / cannibalizing sales of Samsung and Chinese OEM’s, not so much from Huawei), an astonishing figure for a first year product that for some Apple haters is “late already, 7 years behind”. Some say Apple is only able to sell expensive Foldables because Apple users are brainwashed gullible sheep who will buy anything Apple makes, but would choose differently if they only looked closely at what Android Foldables offer. As if selling your products isn’t exactly what you want. I guess Android folks will rejoice when their Foldable sales stagnate saying “see, Android buyers are fussy and critical in their thinking and purchasing, they won’t buy just because it has a fruit logo on it”. IDC’s dramatic final words – “the era of cheap smartphones is over.” Even if memory prices retreat back to Pre-AI levels, it’s unclear if Chinese or now India OEM’s will have the stomach to reenter the lower price tiers market again by eventually cutting prices back if they can. They’ll have to have BOM pricing and supply assurances before committing again to go to lowest common denominator smartphones.'
on Apple: An hour with Mark Gurman and Nilay Patel (video) - 'Good catch Greg. To put that 10,000,000 number into perspective, that was Steve Jobs’ goal for the first year of iPhone sales, which was achieved in October 2008 according to the few mentions that I could find. So these guys took about 10X as long as Apple did to achieve that number.'
on Premarket: Apple is green - 'Macro issues like rising treasury yields and gasoline prices seem to be tamping the momentum a bit. Maybe it’s just a blip, for all I know.'
on Apple: An hour with Mark Gurman and Nilay Patel (video) - 'Jonny, I did find it worthwhile, but difficult, to listen to because of the overall negativity of his takes and looking at a perspective that puts Apple in its worst light. But for someone who professes to be a big fan of Apple products, he does seem to take the most negative spin on anything related to Apple. I was thinking about this and then something came to me that may explain this. It seems that a lot of what he talks about is in relation to Ive and the design team at Apple. I am guessing that the people that are leaking to him may be the ones from the team that are still at Apple and I would bet that they do not like the “demotion” that they took after Ive left so the stuff that they are going to leak is going to be negative. If there are other leakers in Gurman’s camp, I am going to be that they are probably not as happy with Apple either. Otherwise, they would not be leaking. That may explain the overall negativity of Gurman’s reports. The other thing that is grating in his reports is that he seems to take the attitude that he knows best for Apple. It comes across as smug to me and is another reason why he is difficult to listen to.'
on Apple: An hour with Mark Gurman and Nilay Patel (video) - 'You could not pay me enough to listen to these two talking inanely for a whole hour.'
on British GQ considers the iPhone Duo - 'There are no left or right handed notebooks. Huh. A spiral notebook bound on the long side on the left is clearly optimized for a right handed writer. A left handed writer has to cross over the spiral binding, which is less comfortable.'
on British GQ considers the iPhone Duo - 'That is good to hear. I swipe with my left thumb so much (I’m right handed), that left socket is “loose” now & I have to pop it in on occasion.'
on Premarket: Apple is green - 'I’m guessing the duo demand is gonna be off the charts, new form factor, exciting new changes and I think the stock should see a pop over the next quarter'
