[HN Gopher] The Apple $2T Economy
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The Apple $2T Economy
Author : zdw
Score : 35 points
Date : 2023-09-04 21:28 UTC (1 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.asymco.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.asymco.com)
| oflannabhra wrote:
| Horace is one of the better thinkers regarding Apple's business.
| He consistently ranks relatively high amongst the independent
| analysts at predicting Apple's quarterly earnings, although to be
| honest I don't put much stock in that.
|
| He did a lot of analysis to determine how many active devices
| Apple had in the world before Apple even started reporting those
| figures.
|
| He was one of the only analysts who understood Apple's position
| and scale, as well as some of the internal culture that helped
| explain a lot of their seemingly abstruse decision making.
|
| Recently he got really focused on "micro-mobility" (ie, Bird/Lime
| scooters, etc) which hasn't really been as earthshaking as he
| predicted, but he's been mostly proven right about Apple.
|
| It's unreal to see the scope of Tim Cook's Apple (or the iPhone
| Apple if you prefer).
| brailsafe wrote:
| > Recently he got really focused on "micro-mobility" (ie,
| Bird/Lime scooters, etc) which hasn't really been as
| earthshaking as he predicted, but he's been mostly proven right
| about Apple.
|
| What was his prediction? Seems like that's only increasing in
| popularity as people realize cars are like the most absurdly
| wasteful, lazy, and/or excessive methods of transportation
| imaginable for most daily activities, but it would depend on
| where you are and what your real requirements are.
| mschuster91 wrote:
| > Recently he got really focused on "micro-mobility" (ie,
| Bird/Lime scooters, etc) which hasn't really been as
| earthshaking as he predicted
|
| Mostly because of antisocial behavior of all sorts: people
| thinking that scooters were similar to bikes so you could drive
| them while wasted, random youth groups throwing them off of
| bridges, into waterways or otherwise destroying them "for the
| lulz", inconsiderate dumb fucks parking their scooters right
| where they stepped off, or companies that plastered scooters,
| bikes and cars over entire cities without coordinating with any
| authority beforehand.
|
| All of that led to a massive amount of public resentment and
| subsequent regulation that impeded usage (e.g. no-park-here
| zones, speed limits during the night and sobriety tests to
| reduce the risk for drunkards, requirements to force people to
| submit parking photos), and on top of that come the sometimes
| ridiculous "unlock fees" or absurd pricing of 20-30 ct/min or
| more. Public transport tickets cost less than that.
| seydor wrote:
| Paypal transacted 1.3T in 2022. Paypal's market cap is 69B, apple
| 2960B
| megablast wrote:
| That is all paypal does. Apple does a couple of other things.
| voz_ wrote:
| This is a non point?
| oblio wrote:
| [flagged]
| translucyd wrote:
| 2% of the world's GDP? Holy s#!%.
| creer wrote:
| And the Visa system US$6.8 trillion in 2014 says wikipedia 9
| yrs ago as opposed to yrs from now for Apple, and China's
| UnionPay still more, etc, etc. Sure these are big numbers and
| Apple's are not particularly crazy. And like market cap they
| don't have much to do with much else.
| nine_k wrote:
| But $2T is market capitalization, not yearly sales.
|
| This mostly means that AAPL is seen as a safe asset to park
| large amounts of (fiat) money.
| kyruzic wrote:
| At least read the article before commenting. It's talking
| about the total transactional value of the app store. Not
| apples market cap.
| nl wrote:
| While the comment you are replying to is wrong, this
| comment is also incorrect.
|
| > this data includes payments which are not captured by
| Apple directly. In the words of the authors, "More than 90%
| of this figure originated from transactions that did not
| happen through the App Store, meaning that these amounts
| accrued solely to developers and other third parties, and
| that Apple collected no commission on them."
| tracerbulletx wrote:
| The article is about an estimation of the total volume of
| transactions going through apps on the app store, both in the
| app store and outside of the app store direct to the app
| publisher. It's currently at 1.1 trillion, they're projecting
| given the growth rate it could be 2 trillion in 2 years. That
| is the figure being discussed.
| eucjejcjwjf wrote:
| Market cap has absolutely nothing to do with the article and
| the (fiat) take i ungrounded.
| candiddevmike wrote:
| Break them up, way past the point of too big
| Someone wrote:
| FTA: _"More than 90% of this figure originated from
| transactions that did not happen through the App Store,
| meaning that these amounts accrued solely to developers and
| other third parties, and that Apple collected no commission
| on them."_
| nl wrote:
| From the article:
|
| > this data includes payments which are not captured by Apple
| directly. In the words of the authors, "More than 90% of this
| figure originated from transactions that did not happen
| through the App Store, meaning that these amounts accrued
| solely to developers and other third parties, and that Apple
| collected no commission on them."
| _Parfait_ wrote:
| Reactionary and meaningless. Break it up into what?
| folmar wrote:
| Phones, computers, software, consumer electronics, digital
| services, marketplace.
| HFguy wrote:
| Why this is right? You just responded with a list of
| their product lines?
| scarface_74 wrote:
| So exactly how would you "break Apple up"?
| EGreg wrote:
| Once they get bigger than the US government (not the
| country, the government) they wouldn't be able to do
| anything to Apple.
|
| And even now, Apple can just relocate, as Microsoft
| threatened to do.
| ThunderSizzle wrote:
| Then just tax them to hell (aka tariff Apple imports if
| they move out of the country significantly) if that's the
| game these companies want to play. They need the US
| customer base and investment base more than the US needs
| Apple.
| thenewwazoo wrote:
| Exactly how they break themselves up: iPhone, Mac,
| wearables, services, and so on.
| brokencode wrote:
| I don't think so. Apple is not a monopoly in any of those
| spaces, and has plenty of competition on all fronts.
|
| One of the big things that makes Apple products so
| compelling is the integration and shared engineering
| between them.
|
| For instance, Apple made some of the best processor cores
| over the course of a decade for the iPhone. Now, variants
| of those cores are used in everything from the Apple
| Watch to the Mac.
|
| Also, when you buy an iPhone app, it will often also work
| on the iPad and Apple Watch with tight integration and
| syncing.
|
| To break the company up on product lines would
| significantly worsen the products. It would make the
| products less competitive worldwide and likely hurt the
| US economy. I think this would be a nonstarter for
| regulators.
|
| If regulators want to go after anticompetitive practices,
| they would more likely force Apple to make changes to App
| Store policies, which are in many cases incredibly
| unfair.
| mschuster91 wrote:
| > For instance, Apple made some of the best processor
| cores over the course of a decade for the iPhone. Now,
| variants of those cores are used in everything from the
| Apple Watch to the Mac.
|
| Regulators could force Apple to sell their CPUs (if as
| hardware or as IP license) under fair conditions to
| willing buyers, or to open up macOS, iMessage, Facetime
| and Find My iDevice to competitors' products.
|
| That way Apple could still enjoy the benefits of having
| tightly integrated hardware and software, but the rest of
| the world could enjoy high performance ARM systems as
| well, thus _finally_ providing some actual competition to
| Intel and AMD.
| moralestapia wrote:
| I'm not an Apple shill but that would be extremely
| detrimental to users.
| mustafa_pasi wrote:
| Of all the big tech companies Apple is the most innocuous.
| There have no monopoly in any of their sectors and you can
| just ignore them if you wish, as I do, without any
| consequences.
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