苹果财报符合预期，大中华区表现疲软

Mark. We keep reading everything you've got on the blog. I don't know how he's doing it. He's live blogging, he's on TV, he's on radio. It is. It is digital doing it all. Maybe it's his digital twin. No. It's really that's really Mark Gurman, I think. Yeah, just down about 3/10 of a percent here in the aftermarket. Um, where should we go? Where should we start when it comes to the Apple story right now? Well, let's let me give the backdrop.

No regular iPhone 18. The iPhone 18 Pro is the most minor European upgrade we've seen in a long time. Nobody can find an iPhone duo, no iPhone air two. All the major fall products the MacBook Pro with touch, the Home View, the HomePod mini, the Apple TV, the All That iPad. None of them launch until the holiday quarter get they still beat and they beat because of the iPhone 18 Pro. Uh, likely. Also from continued demand for the iPhone 17 Pro, Promax and all the carrier deals you saw, uh, earlier in the quarter.

Uh, so this is a phenomenal report for Apple. The big news, which I think will be phenomenal is the guidance, uh, for the December quarter, Given the backdrop of everything I explain, it all comes down to how the iPhone do what was going to perform. Uh, and so far, uh, the iPhone duo supply is very difficult to understand. New pre-orders didn't come. Uh, aren't launching until the end of January for many buyers. You can't get them at retail stores right now unless you're in I bought.

Uh, so I'll be interested to see the commentary there and what the numbers actually turn out to be. The other piece here is Greater China and services, both, uh, either a big fall or a strong deceleration. Okay. So yeah, the a big miss when it comes to China. We'll get to that in just a minute. First of all, I want you to help us with the math. If when we do get that guidance about halfway through the call, as you remind everybody on the live blog, Mark, that we're going to get, how do we know the share of duo in there based on the number that we get?

Uh, we have no idea in there. And they're not going to tell us. Uh, so it's going to be difficult to discern, but a bigger number will be it's a $2,000 phone. So a bigger number, a bigger number will mean that there's, you know, quite a big, uptake for the iPhone duo, but they don't register revenue, or at least they traditionally have not registered revenue until the consumer actually receives the device and order being placed.

Doesn't mean that we're going to add that to the numbers. It has to be the person has received the phone, it's kept the phone, uh, etc. the good news for Apple could be that we're going to see a very strong tailwind because of the supply chain shortages, uh, and give them positive numbers into Q2, Q3, Q4 of next year, given how hard this phone is going to be to get for quite a while now, what will that ultimately hurt them?

You know, there's great to have pent up demand, right? It makes for a great story. Great. I think it'll hurt them. I think what Apple is trying to do anyways, especially under tourneys, is create more consistent revenue across the year. For a long time, Apple has pushed everything into the very back part of the year. Uh, and now spreading things across, whether that was the intention or not for the duo, uh, is them hitting a goal they've had for quite some time?

Um, Mark, I, I'm, I'm wondering about the I mean, like a week ago, one of the most read stories in the terminal sitting here was the story you were writing about. Um, the cracked screens on the duo. Has that issue gone away? Do we expect it to be addressed at all? I imagine an analyst will or two will ask about this. We've seen a dramatic slowdown in people reporting the cracks. The cracks are reported from the first units that were sold.

Uh, there does not appear to be any consistency on which units are impacted, whether that's a color, whether that's if you bought it online or in the retail store, whether it was manufactured in China or India or what have you. Uh, I'm sure they'll get a question about it, but it is completely died down, which tells me this was an early batch defect. Uh, was a real issue. There were some influencers online trying to gaslight people into believing this was not an issue.

Um, and the fact of the matter is, for a small percentage of iPhone zero buyers, you open the phone the right way. Uh, and it cracked. Mhm. And that's a real problem. But it clearly was an isolated problem. Mark one of the things that jumped out ahead of the earnings as Tim and I were reading through the blog, um, your comments about how this is going to be the first for Apple's new CEO, John Turnus in charge. And you know what?

We might hear from him on the call? He's a product guy. So I'm just curious what you're going to be listening out for, of what he might tell you, all this credit. Yeah, yeah, he gets all of his credit for being a product person. But at the end of the day, Apple is a product company and nothing has changed here. Uh, all the initiatives that you see introduced, you know, over the past several weeks, these were all in the works for half a decade under Tim Cook.

Obviously, Turnus was extremely, you know, deep in the thick of things. Uh, but the reality is, is that nothing is changing a ton at Apple. Uh, because of this, at least for now. I have reported, though, he wants the company to run faster, wants to run leaner. There have been a lot of under the radar layoffs and less under the radar layoffs at Apple. Uh, there's been cost cutting, and I expect more cost cutting to happen.

And so the guidance, uh, definitely is going to be the most interesting part here. Why are they looking at all of these layoffs? Why are they looking at the cost cutting? What does that mean for revenue and what they're expecting there. Hey, Mark, let's go to the AI story here. Uh, Apple's up roughly 25 AI story. Okay, so. Well, that's the point. So Apple's up roughly 25%. Best performing magic seven going into today's print beating by far Microsoft down a tad up 10%.

So not only is it is it beating the um greater index, but it's it's it's like the only one that's beating the greater index, right. Um, so Apple has been punished in the past and, and criticized for not having an AI strategy. But what that means is it does have a free cash flow position that is enviable. If you are spending a lot of your cash right now, like some of these hyperscalers are in, is that am I am I looking at this incorrectly?

No, I think you're looking at the most optimistic view here. But at the same time, we've seen zero evidence from Apple that they're going to be able to successfully take advantage of that cash holding and trade that in, uh, for a strong AI strategy. I've been using OpenAI ChatGPT Over the weekend. Mhm. Uh, have completely, you know, immersed myself in an apple has nothing close. It's a game changer. It's literally like an all day assistant that's like a human that you can have.

This is the agent. This is their answer to muse. This is their agent. Yes. Um, answer to, uh, to Claude. Answer to muse. It's been pretty terrific. And Siri is operating nowhere close. What about Siri, the Siri AI chat bot? Have you played with it? Like it? Is it? Yeah. Siri is fantastic. For 90% of use cases, you ask questions. It uses that Gemini model to get you the answers. You need to get something done on your phone.

You can get something done on your phone. But in terms of replicating a real world assistant, it's not that. It's basically what the original vision of Siri was 15 years ago, but finally executed correctly. That's an amazing thing. It means that the core AI, a product that Apple has, finally works. That means they have an excellent foundation. Now they have to actually build something on top of it. Services. This has always been an important, um, revenue generator, and it looks like it's slowing.

Um, how problematic is that? Or what's the question to ask of John Turnus and th