Tim Cook Admits Apple Has Stopped Growing In North America(businessinsider.com)
businessinsider.com
Tim Cook Admits Apple Has Stopped Growing In North America
http://www.businessinsider.com/tim-cook-apple-has-stopped-growing-in-north-america-2014-2
6 comments
My question after reading the article is: is this bad? Is it a terrible thing that they're not growing in the USA? Apple is huge. What's really achieved by them being even bigger?
Is growth for growth's sake important?
If they continued to generate $billions each quarter, make great stuff, delight consumers all over the world, and did it for the next 20 years, I'd call that a roaring success personally.
Granted, that wouldn't make me want to buy their stock. But Apple don't seem to care about that. If their stock crashed, they'd probably take advantage of it and buy loads back, with their piles of cash. As long as they're making great stuff, in my book, that's enough.
Apple, to me, seems like a company that really should be held in a trust, or owned by its employees. Its goals seem kinda incompatible with the market and Wall Street.
Is growth for growth's sake important?
If they continued to generate $billions each quarter, make great stuff, delight consumers all over the world, and did it for the next 20 years, I'd call that a roaring success personally.
Granted, that wouldn't make me want to buy their stock. But Apple don't seem to care about that. If their stock crashed, they'd probably take advantage of it and buy loads back, with their piles of cash. As long as they're making great stuff, in my book, that's enough.
Apple, to me, seems like a company that really should be held in a trust, or owned by its employees. Its goals seem kinda incompatible with the market and Wall Street.
Because "stopped growing" might easily convert to "started declining" soon (a part of which is evident by the sales charts shown in the article). And that'd be worrying for them.
It's the law of large numbers - you can't keep growing forever, and that's clearly what's happening in the US. They're still a wildly profitable company, though, and there's plenty of room for growth in emerging markets like China.
of course yo can keep growing forever... just keep inovating.
Thank You for stating the obvious.
Apple has locked up profits in North America quite effectively and will no doubt focus on maintaining its share of the market, but further growth will have to happen in other markets. The question is, what does Apple have planned to address other markets? And what will the impact of new market segments be on this growth?
I can understand the merit of these questions as a stockholder. To me though the disappointing aspect is that having built one of the most efficient cash generating machines imaginable, Apple hasn't seen fit to pursue a "Big Idea" that could only be realized with such an impressive cash hoard. Dividends seem so depressingly ordinary for what was so creative a company.