I recently made a 4 generation upgrade - from an iPhone 11 to an iPhone 15. It was remarkable how un-exciting it was. It used to be so much fun to get a new phone. Apple has a problem.

Phones seem to have peaked some years ago, but they're dead set on keeping with the yearly release model. Modern phones have absolutely ridiculous specs. I do not need a $1000+ super phone that folds in half, has an 8 core processor and 16 gigs of memory, with a professional camera built into it (maybe 2 or 4).

It blows my mind. What are people actually doing with their phones? I doubt most people even know why they're upgrading unless: carrier offers upgrade, old phone broke, or must have the biggest number

Quarterly Sales (year-over-year):

Americas -1.4%

Europe +0.7%

China -8.1%

Japan -12.7%

Rest of Asia -17.2%

People have been talking about sales dropping in China, but that appears to be the least-bad part of Asia! (What's going on with the economy over there?)

USD strengthened against most currencies. US products more expensive.

IDK but shopping in Japan felt amazing this year. Wish I could eat like that at home for a reasonable cost, not to mention how much better everything taste.

As a foreigner buying Yen, it must feel amazing. For a native Japanese, it does not feel good at all. Many iPhone users in Japan are afraid that Apple will increase the price of this year's iPhone by a large margin due to the weak yen. iPhones at their current prices are already unaffordable for many Japanese.

Imported foods, such as oranges, have surged in price due to the weak yen. Nearly all orange juice brands decided to halt production until June.

Seems like every big tech company's biggest innovation these days is massive stock buybacks.

Executives get large amount of their compensation in stock, and also get pretty direct control of the value of that stock (oh no! We did a bad job and our stock price will drop! Let’s use company money to buy back stock to push the value up again! Woo!)

Seems like HN is always interested in Meta's and Google's earnings, but not too much in Apple's, I wonder why.

And looking at a $110 billion share buy-back.

Any company that can't think of any effective ways of using $110 billion to increase their own business is not worth risking your money in. Get it out now! While you can!

Do they mean first quarter?

Apple's quarters are not aligned with calendar years. Q1 is the last quarter of the year.

Many companies have their fiscal year offset from the calendar year.

"Apple announced that its board had authorized $110 billion in share repurchases, a 22% increase over last year’s $90 billion authorization. It’s the largest in history, ahead of Apple’s previous repurchases, according to data from Birinyi Associates." - https://www.cnbc.com/2024/05/02/apple-aapl-earnings-report-q...

The % share reduction on a Buyback is relative to the market cap of the company (plus issuance), the absolute number isn't relevant from a return perspective.

$110B is less than 5% of market cap (not including issuance for equity comp)

How much did they actually use of the $90b authorization last year?