Apple of My i
In the last six months or so Apple’s share price has fallen from over $700 to just under $400, which equates to a loss of some $290 billion. As a consumer there’s no reason you should care about this; it just means a few boys with too much testosterone (ie investors and analysts) got all bullish and confident and then became less so. Apple doesn’t decide what it’s worth, the market does. Apple is the same company today as it was in September except now, some hucksters think that bets they made on the company won’t pay off. To the Fogey non-economist this makes no sense but it’s how companies rise and fall – on the basis of expectations, predictions, forecasts. At Fogey central we’ve always thought the notion of year-on-year net gains to be absurd. The more successful you are the exponentially harder it must become to keep making the same percentage return that shareholders supposedly ‘demand’. Shit subsequently happens and that causes change which is where money is made and lost. That’s good old capitalism for you. A few people make truckloads of cash and many more people lose their jobs and become mired in misery.
The supposed reason for the decline in Apple’s share value is sales of newer iPads and iPhones haven’t met expectations. But these expectations could only have been based on previous performance and since no market’s desire for any product is insatiable there had, eventually, to be some slow-down in the rate of growth in high end smartphones and tablets, a sector that is still growing nonetheless.
The iPhone 5 faced stiff competition from, initially the Samsung Galaxy S3 and then its successor the S4. And the iPad’s latest variants are being made to look egregiously over-priced when compared with Amazon’s Kindle Fire HD and the Google Nexus tablets.
But all the speculative chatter regarding goings-on at Cupertino (Apple HQ in California) has surrounded the impending arrival of Apple TV, or iTV, or whatever, and Tech Fogey is convinced this will be more of a game changer than the iPad and iPhone combined.
Aside from the beauty of its devices, Apple’s other big draw has always been the quality and efficacy of its software – all those million or so apps, iTunes and the like. Critics have complained that Apple’s operating system, iOS, is a closed system (songs downloaded from iTunes would only play on Apple devices, for example) but this is less true now than it used to be. And in any case, it’s a bit like going to a 5-star luxury resort and then complaining that leaving to visit the flea-ridden shanty town next door is difficult.
Sales of TVs have been static for some time, notwithstanding the arrival of so-called ‘smart TVs’. The smartness is Internet connectivity which in turn gives viewers access to such fare as BBC iPlayer and a few other catch-up services plus the option to subscribe to video streaming providers such as Netflix or LoveFilm. Providing your broadband connection can cope. There are other, newer innovations in TV-land such as ‘4K’ (super-super HD) and of course 3-bleedin-D, but consumers have been hugely underwhelmed. Relatively few US consumers who have bought smart TVs actually use that smartness, even if they’ve hooked their TV up to the Internet and many purchasers haven’t even done that.
One feature finding its televisual feet is gesture recognition – wiggling digits at the screen to change channels or make other selections – another is voice recognition, which is finally becoming useful rather than a confusing, inconsistent pain in the arse.
Now imagine a 50-inch iPad with gesture and voice recognition that both work beautifully. Being Apple, it will look stunning. Its operating system will initiate a rustling deep in your nethers and there will be so much to watch that you actually want to watch, you will permanently confine to couch and die thereon, joyfully, of malnutrition. No one will care what the iTV costs; everyone will want one.
And when this happens – as it surely will – all those bleating analyst muppets who tut-tutted about iPhone sales not being up to snuff will be made to look like the short-sighted fuckwits they surely are.
And if you can get hold of some Apple shares, now might be a good time to do so.
