Bloomberg Talks
00:02:50 · Carol Massar, Mark Gurman, Caroline Hepker
[00:02:50] S0: Will that ultimately hurt them? You know, it's great to have pent-up demand, right? It makes for a great story, great headlines. [00:02:56] S1: I don't think it'll hurt them. I think what Apple is trying to do anyways, especially under Ternus, is create more consistent revenue across the year. For a long time, Apple has pushed everything into the very back part of the year and now spreading things across, whether that was the intention or not for the duo, is them hitting a goal they've had for quite some time. [00:03:17] S3: Mark, 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 the cracked screens on the duo. Has that issue gone away? Do we expect it to be addressed at all? I imagine an analyst or two will ask about this.
00:03:17 · Caroline Hepker, Mark Gurman, Carol Massar
[00:03:17] S3: Mark, 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 the cracked screens on the duo. Has that issue gone away? Do we expect it to be addressed at all? I imagine an analyst or two will ask about this. [00:03:36] S1: We've seen a dramatic slowdown in people reporting the cracks. The cracks were reported from the first units that were sold. 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. 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. It was a real issue. There were some influencers online trying to gaslight people into believing this was not an issue. But the fact of the matter is, for a small percentage of iPhone Duo buyers, you opened the phone the right way, and it cracked. And that's a real problem, but it clearly was an isolated problem. [00:04:21] S0: Mark, one of the things that jumped out ahead of the earnings, as Tim and I were reading through the blog, your comments about how this is going to be the first for Apple with new CEO John Ternus in charge and 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 say or not say.
00:04:21 · Carol Massar, Mark Gurman, Tim Stenovec
[00:04:21] S0: Mark, one of the things that jumped out ahead of the earnings, as Tim and I were reading through the blog, your comments about how this is going to be the first for Apple with new CEO John Ternus in charge and 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 say or not say. [00:04:40] S1: Yeah, he gets all this credit for being a product person. But at the end of the day, Apple is a product company and nothing has changed here. All the initiatives that you see introduced over the past several weeks, these were all in the works for half a decade under Tim Cook. Obviously, Ternus was extremely deep in the thick of things. But the reality is that nothing is changing a ton at Apple. because of this, at least for now. I have reported, though, he wants the company to run faster, wants it to run leaner. There have been a lot of under-the-radar layoffs and less under-the-radar layoffs at Apple. There's been cost-cutting, and I expect more cost-cutting to happen. And so the guidance definitely is going to be the most interesting part here. Why are they looking at all these layoffs? Why are they looking at the cost-cutting? What does that mean for revenue and what they're expecting there? [00:05:22] S2: Hey, Mark, let's go to the AI story here. Apple's up roughly 25%. One AI story. Okay. So Well, that's the point. So Apple is up roughly 25%.
00:05:22 · Tim Stenovec, Caroline Hepker, Mark Gurman, Carol Massar
[00:05:22] S2: Hey, Mark, let's go to the AI story here. Apple's up roughly 25%. One AI story. Okay. So Well, that's the point. So Apple is up roughly 25%. [00:05:31] S3: It's best performing mag seven going into today's print beating by far Microsoft down up to up 10%. So not only is it, is it beating the greater index, but it's, it's, it's like the only one that's beating the greater index, right? [00:05:46] S2: Um, so Apple. [00:05:48] S3: 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 cashflow 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? [00:06:07] S1: 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 open AI chat GPT dot over the weekend, uh, have completely immersed myself in it. 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. [00:06:31] S2: This is the agent. This is their answer to Muse? [00:06:34] S1: This is their agent, yes. Answer to Claude, answer to Muse. It's been pretty terrific, and Siri AI is operating nowhere close. [00:06:44] S0: What about Siri, the Siri AI chatbot? Have you played with it? Do you like it?
00:06:44 · Carol Massar, Mark Gurman
[00:06:44] S0: What about Siri, the Siri AI chatbot? Have you played with it? Do you like it? [00:06:49] S1: Yeah. Yeah. Siri AI is fantastic for 90% of use cases. You ask it questions, it uses that Gemini model to get you the answers. You need to get something done on your phone, it 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 product that Apple has finally works. That means they have an excellent foundation. Now they have to actually build something on top of it. [00:07:20] S0: Services. This has always been an important revenue generator, and it looks like it's slowing. How problematic is that, or what's the question to ask of John Ternus and the C-suite about that? [00:07:34] S1: Well, the question is why, and one of the answers is because Google searches are down because of AI, and a big chunk of the revenue Apple gets from services is a revenue share from Google search done in Safari. And as people move to the Gemini app, as people move towards the ChatGPT app or the Claude app or the Muse app, or even Siri AI to get things done that they normally would do in a search engine, that services revenue is going to come down. What Apple needs to do is figure out a way to make up for that revenue loss by monetizing search on its platforms, or shall I say AI search on its platforms, because they're not doing that.
00:07:34 · Mark Gurman, Caroline Hepker, Carol Massar
[00:07:34] S1: Well, the question is why, and one of the answers is because Google searches are down because of AI, and a big chunk of the revenue Apple gets from services is a revenue share from Google search done in Safari. And as people move to the Gemini app, as people move towards the ChatGPT app or the Claude app or the Muse app, or even Siri AI to get things done that they normally would do in a search engine, that services revenue is going to come down. What Apple needs to do is figure out a way to make up for that revenue loss by monetizing search on its platforms, or shall I say AI search on its platforms, because they're not doing that. [00:08:07] S3: We're speaking with Mark Gurman. He's Bloomberg News Managing Editor for Global Consumer Tech. We're in the midst of Apple's numbers. That call does start in just about 14 minutes. Mark's going to go to that in a few minutes. We do have a few more minutes with Mark. But to catch everybody up, if you are just joining us, the company reported revenue gains of 12% to $ 114. 5 billion. That was a beat on the top line. China sales, though, fell short of analysts' estimates. iPhone revenue climbed 17% to $ 57. 6 billion. The shares in the after hours, they're flat right now. They fell, they moved higher, and now they're flat. [00:08:41] S0: Yeah, stock is really flat. So, Mark, you know, we've always had high expectations for like what's next from Apple. Where do they go next from here?