Apple’s Ensemble Act Is Working Again
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Apple’s Ensemble Act Is Working Again

Tech giant’s iPhone dependence has shrunk, as iPad, Mac, Wearables and Services all pick up growth.

By DAN GALLAGHER
Wed, Jul 28, 2021 11:19amGrey Clock 2 min

It’s as good a time as any to talk about Apple Inc. without the iPhone.

No, the iconic smartphone isn’t going anywhere. In fact, Apple just reported Tuesday afternoon that iPhone revenue totaled $39.6 billion for its fiscal third quarter ended June 26, up 50% from the same period last year. That represents the best growth the iPhone has seen in six years for what is typically its weakest seasonal quarter, as many buyers begin waiting to make purchases ahead of new devices that typically debut in the early fall.

Wall Street expects Apple to close its fiscal year in September with record iPhone revenue of nearly $187 billion, which would make its phone segment alone the 10th largest business on the S&P 500. But a funny thing has happened over the past few years: The iPhone has also become a notably smaller part of Apple’s business. At the smartphone’s last sales peak in fiscal 2018, the iPhone represented 62% of the company’s total revenue. For the trailing 12-month period ended in June, that number was 52%.

For that performance, Apple can thank its supporting cast across the board. Sales of iPads, Macs and wearables like the Apple Watch and AirPods have boomed over the past three quarters, while service revenue growth also picked up. Macs and iPads were definitely helped by the work-from-home trend sparked by the pandemic, but Apple also made some timely and notable updates to both lineups—including new in-house chips for several of its Mac models. Combined Mac sales for the last three quarters have totalled $26 billion—up 33% from the same period last year.

That’s a helpful trend for Apple as it heads into what will likely be a much more subdued sales cycle for the iPhone. Last year’s iPhone 12 models, which featured a new design and 5G connectivity for the first time, sparked a major upgrade push. Analysts estimate that Apple sold 186 million iPhone units for the nine-month period ended June, up 26% from the same period last year, according to consensus estimates from Visible Alpha. But Apple typically follows major upgrades with minor ones. Analysts expect iPhone unit sales to be flat in Apple’s 2022 fiscal year following a 22% surge for the current one.

The big question is whether the supporting acts can keep stepping up. The remote-work boost from the pandemic is already fading, as evidenced by a notable slowdown in PC sales during the second quarter, as reported by market-tracking firms IDC and Gartner. Apple is also still contending with the chip shortage. Chief Financial Officer Luca Maestri said on Tuesday’s conference call that the company expects supply constraints to worsen in the September quarter relative to June, mostly affecting the iPhone and iPad.

Still, Mr. Maestri projected the company will deliver “very strong double-digit” revenue growth for its fiscal fourth quarter. With a market value of nearly $2.5 trillion and a stock still at a relatively high multiple of about 28 times forward earnings, Apple can’t afford to have any of its businesses start phoning it in.

Reprinted by permission of The Wall Street Journal, Copyright 2021 Dow Jones & Company. Inc. All Rights Reserved Worldwide. Original date of publication: June 27, 2021



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China’s EV Juggernaut Is a Warning for the West

Competitive pressure and creativity have made Chinese-designed and -built electric cars formidable competitors

By GREG IP
Thu, Jun 8, 2023 4 min

China rocked the auto world twice this year. First, its electric vehicles stunned Western rivals at the Shanghai auto show with their quality, features and price. Then came reports that in the first quarter of 2023 it dethroned Japan as the world’s largest auto exporter.

How is China in contention to lead the world’s most lucrative and prestigious consumer goods market, one long dominated by American, European, Japanese and South Korean nameplates? The answer is a unique combination of industrial policy, protectionism and homegrown competitive dynamism. Western policy makers and business leaders are better prepared for the first two than the third.

Start with industrial policy—the use of government resources to help favoured sectors. China has practiced industrial policy for decades. While it’s finding increased favour even in the U.S., the concept remains controversial. Governments have a poor record of identifying winning technologies and often end up subsidising inferior and wasteful capacity, including in China.

But in the case of EVs, Chinese industrial policy had a couple of things going for it. First, governments around the world saw climate change as an enduring threat that would require decade-long interventions to transition away from fossil fuels. China bet correctly that in transportation, the transition would favour electric vehicles.

In 2009, China started handing out generous subsidies to buyers of EVs. Public procurement of taxis and buses was targeted to electric vehicles, rechargers were subsidised, and provincial governments stumped up capital for lithium mining and refining for EV batteries. In 2020 NIO, at the time an aspiring challenger to Tesla, avoided bankruptcy thanks to a government-led bailout.

While industrial policy guaranteed a demand for EVs, protectionism ensured those EVs would be made in China, by Chinese companies. To qualify for subsidies, cars had to be domestically made, although foreign brands did qualify. They also had to have batteries made by Chinese companies, giving Chinese national champions like Contemporary Amperex Technology and BYD an advantage over then-market leaders from Japan and South Korea.

To sell in China, foreign automakers had to abide by conditions intended to upgrade the local industry’s skills. State-owned Guangzhou Automobile Group developed the manufacturing know-how necessary to become a player in EVs thanks to joint ventures with Toyota and Honda, said Gregor Sebastian, an analyst at Germany’s Mercator Institute for China Studies.

Despite all that government support, sales of EVs remained weak until 2019, when China let Tesla open a wholly owned factory in Shanghai. “It took this catalyst…to boost interest and increase the level of competitiveness of the local Chinese makers,” said Tu Le, managing director of Sino Auto Insights, a research service specialising in the Chinese auto industry.

Back in 2011 Pony Ma, the founder of Tencent, explained what set Chinese capitalism apart from its American counterpart. “In America, when you bring an idea to market you usually have several months before competition pops up, allowing you to capture significant market share,” he said, according to Fast Company, a technology magazine. “In China, you can have hundreds of competitors within the first hours of going live. Ideas are not important in China—execution is.”

Thanks to that competition and focus on execution, the EV industry went from a niche industrial-policy project to a sprawling ecosystem of predominantly private companies. Much of this happened below the Western radar while China was cut off from the world because of Covid-19 restrictions.

When Western auto executives flew in for April’s Shanghai auto show, “they saw a sea of green plates, a sea of Chinese brands,” said Le, referring to the green license plates assigned to clean-energy vehicles in China. “They hear the sounds of the door closing, sit inside and look at the quality of the materials, the fabric or the plastic on the console, that’s the other holy s— moment—they’ve caught up to us.”

Manufacturers of gasoline cars are product-oriented, whereas EV manufacturers, like tech companies, are user-oriented, Le said. Chinese EVs feature at least two, often three, display screens, one suitable for watching movies from the back seat, multiple lidars (laser-based sensors) for driver assistance, and even a microphone for karaoke (quickly copied by Tesla). Meanwhile, Chinese suppliers such as CATL have gone from laggard to leader.

Chinese dominance of EVs isn’t preordained. The low barriers to entry exploited by Chinese brands also open the door to future non-Chinese competitors. Nor does China’s success in EVs necessarily translate to other sectors where industrial policy matters less and creativity, privacy and deeply woven technological capability—such as software, cloud computing and semiconductors—matter more.

Still, the threat to Western auto market share posed by Chinese EVs is one for which Western policy makers have no obvious answer. “You can shut off your own market and to a certain extent that will shield production for your domestic needs,” said Sebastian. “The question really is, what are you going to do for the global south, countries that are still very happily trading with China?”

Western companies themselves are likely to respond by deepening their presence in China—not to sell cars, but for proximity to the most sophisticated customers and suppliers. Jörg Wuttke, the past president of the European Union Chamber of Commerce in China, calls China a “fitness centre.” Even as conditions there become steadily more difficult, Western multinationals “have to be there. It keeps you fit.”

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