Olivier Barthelemy
Nov 3 · 1 min read

A couple of larger-picture things to keep in mind:

1- Apple has bought back 30% of its own shares over the past few years. This explains a lot of the share price. Analysts expect such massive buybacks to stop next year or the year after.

2- Even if not straight Iphone sales, all the other stuff (peripherals, services) that Apple sells, it sells to Iphone owners, and if not, to Mac or Ipad owners (which I’d guess almost all have an Iphone). The Iphone is the bedrock on which Apple is building the rest of its sales. Service/peripherals sales are a multiple of the active Iphone park; expanding that park is the best thing Apple can do for its business, and I’m not sure the current lower sales enable that in spite of the possibly longer lifetime of devices.

Unless Apple starts selling services/peripherals to non-Iphone-owners (which is unlikely) there’s a hard ceiling on those ancillary sales. They can provide a short-term boost to growth and lasting extra income, but not a long-term boost to growth unless Apple keeps adding extra services on top of extra services which feels unrealistic.