Analyst somehow thinks "it's over. It's over for Apple"
What you need to know
- Analyst Hilary Kramer was talking to Yahoo Finance.
- "Apple is a hardware company."
- 12-25 year-olds want Android and Windows, apparently.
Sometimes you read or hear something and you just have to re-live it to make sure you didn't imagine it. That's definitely the case here after analyst Hilary Kramer told Yahoo Finance that "it's over for Apple" with a straight face.
The video, shared to Twitter and then taken apart by John Gruber, is one that is absolutely worth watching. In it, Kramer makes some rather interesting claims.
They say that:
- People aged from 12 through 25 don't want iPhones. They want Android instead.
- Not content with Android, they're also going into Microsoft Stores, too. They didn't say whether they were actually buying anything, though.
- People are "upset" at something. Presumably Apple.
- Everyone has found there are vulnerabilities in Apple devices.
- The batteries "go really quickly" on iPhones.
Here it is in full. The fun starts around the 1:50 mark.
"At the end of the day, Apple is a hardware company, not a software company," Kramer Capital Research's @HilaryKramer says, "and that's proven with the prices dropping so significantly. ... It's just over. It's over for Apple." pic.twitter.com/SCliqahSol"At the end of the day, Apple is a hardware company, not a software company," Kramer Capital Research's @HilaryKramer says, "and that's proven with the prices dropping so significantly. ... It's just over. It's over for Apple." pic.twitter.com/SCliqahSol— Rich Tehrani (@rtehrani) September 12, 2019September 12, 2019
That's quite the rant. And we're not even sure the part about Apple being a hardware company is correct, either.
Apple makes so much money from services that it could be its own business and still do extremely well. In fact, Apple's services business grows 88% year-over-year. And as John also points out, the whole reason people buy Apple hardware is because of the Apple software that runs on it.
Apple is arguably more of a software and services company than one that focuses on hardware. And we don't even have Apple TV+ or Apple Arcade yet!
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As for the future, Kramer thinks that the next generation of buyers are going elsewhere. In fact, a recent Piper Jaffray survey found that 83% of teens in the United States already own an iPhone. And 86% expect their next phone to be an iPhone, too. But sure, they must be picking up those iPhones running Android.
But remember, Apple's done.
Oliver Haslam has written about Apple and the wider technology business for more than a decade with bylines on How-To Geek, PC Mag, iDownloadBlog, and many more. He has also been published in print for Macworld, including cover stories. At iMore, Oliver is involved in daily news coverage and, not being short of opinions, has been known to 'explain' those thoughts in more detail, too. Having grown up using PCs and spending far too much money on graphics card and flashy RAM, Oliver switched to the Mac with a G5 iMac and hasn't looked back. Since then he's seen the growth of the smartphone world, backed by iPhone, and new product categories come and go. Current expertise includes iOS, macOS, streaming services, and pretty much anything that has a battery or plugs into a wall. Oliver also covers mobile gaming for iMore, with Apple Arcade a particular focus. He's been gaming since the Atari 2600 days and still struggles to comprehend the fact he can play console quality titles on his pocket computer.