Bill Donahue on Apple dominated June quarter smartphone sales - 'Not having a Counterpoint subscription, does anyone have any idea what sort of turnover in smartphones there is, in terms % of total that are replaced annually?'
on Rotating out of Apple - 'fighting over .. internet search ad revenue And so far, no one has come up with an alternate way to pay for AI ‘tokens’ or otherwise pay back that gigabuck investments in AI facilities. Eventually, if there is a true value proposition (and I suspect there is), someone will figure this out. And Apple will be able to capitalize on it, adapt to it, or ‘tax it’ by connecting users to background AI.'
on Evercore: 'The Little Mac That AI Can' - 'This AI focus angling towards the enterprise reminds me of what Errol Brandt says in his YouTube videos. On a Zoom meeting with him and others recently, I asked, “Since you’ve said Apple has been in touch with you, why wouldn’t they buy you? Or are they working on their own AI engine?” Errol replied that Apple didn’t seem interested in the enterprise, nor had they “waved a check at him.”'
on Apple dominated June quarter smartphone sales - 'Upvoted. You’re not wrong, Joseph. They also don’t report sales of used iPhones. Competitors, forced to raise prices due to memory, resulted in deferred sales and switchers to iPhone. Maybe some iPhone buyers jumped the gun assuming price increases are coming.'
on Apple investors: Mark your calendars for 9/9/26 - 'Seth: I have to disagree with your request to Bart to “stop with the AI slop.” I find the thinking in his posts to be Bart’s, not Gemini’s, as the thought resides in the nature of the specific questions (and follow-up questions) that he poses to the AI agent. I think everyone here, especially Bart, knows not to take the answers too seriously. And yes, Gemini’s replies are often verbose, as are many of the comments made by others here…yet I for one find value in them. Not all of them, but some of them. YMMV…'
on Evercore: 'The Little Mac That AI Can' - 'Joseph, Thanks for posting. It comes down to one main thing. You are the product.'
on Evercore: 'The Little Mac That AI Can' - 'Regarding that last paragraph, it’s a footnote, and I just noticed that the copy-paste dropped off the link number, which is 1, and refers to the statement “There are 22 billion active accounts across the top 20 “platforms”1. The ranking is shown below.”, found just before the first chart. Also, my apologies for saying “Part 1 of 2” twice, instead of “Part 2 of 2” in the second half of the quoted material.'
on Premarket: Apple is red - 'Max pain and Call mountain and Put peak are ALL at 310. Quite likely, that’s the anchor then. With Nvidia reporting blowout earnings last evening with a forecast of 70% growth compared to Apple’s 10%, there will be some big money flowing out of AAPL into NVDA. I hope I’m wrong!'
on Evercore: 'The Little Mac That AI Can' - 'But that’s a classic book. I think AI can, I think AI can…'
on Apple event: Found in translation - 'When I first saw notice of the event, I got it as “rise and shine “ before I realized what it actually said. For the US, the reference to this other phase seems intentional. I saw it as a reference to John Ternus waking up the product line. In other countries, that other phrase wouldn’t work.'
on Apple investors: Mark your calendars for 9/9/26 - 'Thinking along similar lines, I’ve speculated that Apple priced an unannounced memory subsidy into iPhone 18 handsets. No matter emerging technologies, the iPhone is Apple’s revenue driver. It would be incumbent on Apple to maintain prior iPhone pricing during the iPhone 18/19 model years. By then the demand surge for memory may have mostly returned to historic levels, as will memory pricing. I like your extrapolation of Apple’s money management, something WS has failed to do. Apple’s Guidance, when it comes, for FQ1/27 is going to be very interesting.'
on Apple investors: Mark your calendars for 9/9/26 - 'Here’s the fun part. Remember in Q2 FY2026, Apple buy back repurchases were curtailed from roughly $25B per quarter over the past 6 quarters to just $11B for Q2, and very little or none at all was purchased in February and March of 2026, “saving” ~$14B in expenses. What are the chances that the $14B saved was then allocated (with $11B more from FCF) to make a preemptive $25B DRAM memory purchases, securing reasonably abundant supply for the entire sales year of new iPhone 18 & Ultra series, and ensuring that most if not all iPhones (save for 17e and 18e) are fully equipped to run Apple Intelligence and local Edge AI? This action would dovetail with the Earnings call statement by Kevan: “Taking a step back, we plan to continue our capital allocation philosophy of first making all the necessary investments needed to support the business, and then returning excess cash to shareholders over time. Net cash neutral has been a valuable framework for our capital structure, and since 2018, we have significantly right-sized our balance sheet and reduced net cash by over $100 billion. As we move ahead, we are no longer providing net cash neutral as a formal target and we will independently evaluate cash and debt.” And in Q&A: “We believe we’re at a stage where evaluating cash and debt independently is really the right approach for us and allows us to make more optimal economic decisions around how we best utilize our debt and cash portfolios to support the business, based on business factors and market conditions. We also believe we can manage this flexibility while also being very efficient and disciplined. So with all that being said, we remain very committed to returning excess cash to shareholders. As we talked about our investment in the business, I think as you know, we invest in the business first and foremost and then look to kind of return excess cash to shareholders. I think we have a very good track record of being disciplined. We’ve returned over a trillion dollars to shareholders from the start of the program, over 850 billion of which has been through share repurchases, and so the other piece as well that’s really important is as part of that, we also have increased our buyback authorization by another $100 billion, and that’s on top of the leftover capacity from the prior authorization. So you can see the capital return piece is something very important to us, and as we talked about in the prepared remarks, important to the overall approach to delivering long-term shareholder value.” Considering Apple is now moving away from the supply constrained 3nm processes that were used for its high demand & volume iPhones 16’s & 17’s, and M4 & M5 Macs, they’ve probably purchased sufficient (for now) supply of DRAM at least for iPhones, iPads, and Macs for one year’s worth of production, assuming no outrageous demand “problems”. By bankrolling and prepaying for over 50% of TSMC’s 2nm wafers and chip production (for A20, A20 Pro, for iPhone 18’s, M5/M6 Macs and iPad chips, and R2’s for Vision Pro, assuming they’ve ordered plenty, they should have few constraints for the 2027 fiscal sales year, again unless unprecedented demand overwhelms even the loftiest of Apple supply projections, a great problem to have.'
