DID APPLE DELIVER? — The iPhone X (said as “10”) sure looks sweet with its edge-to-edge screen, facial recognition, wireless charging, no home button etc. but at $999 it’s gonna be a big reach for the mass market. Apple also unveiled a somewhat more modestly prices iPhone 8 and 8 Plus. Wall Street wasn’t exactly blown away with Apple shares barely moving in after-hours trading.
Michael Obuchowski, Portfolio Manager, Fieldstone Merlin Dynamic Large Cap Growth ETF (FMDG) and an owner of Apple shares emails: “I believe that Apple delivered on high expectations of a significant 10thAnniversary refresh of the iPhone lineup and upgraded devices.
“With the new iPhone X, Apple has caught up to all the features available in Android phones, improving on many and adding some unique new features … Despite investors’ continuing focus on iPhones, I believe that Apple is no longer interested in just building the best devices. iPhones and all the other devices are now increasingly positioned to provide variety of access to Apple Services.
"They still have to be good enough to bring new users, but their most important goal is to deepen users’ relationship with Apple’s ecosystem and to make it very difficult to leave for the competition. From that perspective, how good the phones were was not as important as providing Apple with 8 iPhones ranging in price from $349-$1149 that could satisfy the most demanding users, those with significantly lower budgets and everybody in between”