Asymco Bulletin 022 - July 19, 2026

Bulletin 20 July 2026

Asymco Bulletin is a digest of all the work we have published for the week ending Jul 19, 2026. Posted on July 20th.

July Office Hours

Asymco Office Hours Live Q&A — Friday, July 31 → The next Asymco Office Hours Live Q&A will be on Friday, July 31st at 12pm ET / 9am PT, the day after Apple’s fiscal Q3 2026 earnings call on Thursday. Horace will review the results and their implications, and we will take Q&A from our live audience. Asymco One subscribers are guaranteed seats, can bring a guest, and will have access to the live recording.

Research

Capturing Eyespace: Plotting Apple’s disruption of eyewear

When Essilor merged with Luxottica in 2018 the eyewear market was $100 billion. In 2021 it was $150 billion. Last year it was $220 billion, this year it’s estimated at $245 billion and in six years, $463 billion. Much of this growth is due to increases in the Asia Pacific region with 11.5% CAGR. The growth is due to improving competitiveness with non-consumption through expanding distribution, mainly through retail and e-commerce. Technologies such as virtual try-on are enhancing accessibility, personalization, and purchasing experiences. Aging populations are also boosting demand for prescription eyewear. Focusing on the buying experience and addressing new users are evolutionary steps but changes in the product itself are an emerging revolution. Injection of software into what has been a purely passive optical object will change how we see the world. →

Why all-in and why all are in

The graph above shows that Amazon, Alphabet, Meta, Microsoft and Oracle decided to transfer their shareholders’ wealth to the shareholders of Nvidia, Micron, Broadcom and Applied materials. The transfer is real since the capital expenditures undertaken with this cash flow by these “hyperscalers” have gone directly to create unprecedented windfall profits for semiconductor companies. The scale is astonishing! These companies alone are taking hundreds of billions out of their owners' pockets. I ask why this is happening and, even more curiously, why is there a rush by all companies to do this. All but one that is. →

Nota Bene

No one admits they like or want to buy more AAPL → Apple hit an all-time high as investors went looking for a hedge against everyone else’s AI spending. The setup is almost funny: Meta, Oracle and Amazon are burning cash to build data centers, while Apple is expected to throw off $143 billion in free cash flow with capex falling. Its edge-AI approach, running models on the device, turns the absence of a frontier model into the whole thesis. The analysts calling it a boring defensive name are the ones who missed it. →

Worldwide PC market update Q2 2026: Omdia and IDC → The PC market shrank about 4 percent while Apple grew, up 16 percent by Omdia’s count and 10 percent by IDC’s. Apple was lifted by the MacBook Neo, placing Dell now within reach. Units are falling while revenue climbs, because everyone is pushing through 20 to 40 percent price increases on the memory crunch. →

Why doesn’t anybody copy Apple? → Everyone copies Apple’s products; almost no one tries to copy its operating model, which is the thing that actually matters. OpenAI poaching Apple people is the first real attempt I have seen to reconstruct that model, and I don’t think they have their priorities straight. Jobs said anyone you removed from Apple would be useless on their own, and they are about to prove him right. →

JP Morgan raises Apple stock price target by $20 to $345 → JP Morgan lifted its Apple target to $345, arguing the memory-driven cost increases are a short-term worry and that iPhone, Mac and iPad volumes have shown little relationship to price over the years. Mac looks the most insulated, helped by AI-led demand.. →

Citi hikes Apple price target by $50 to $365 → Citi cited Apple’s share gains in falling smartphone and PC markets and its power to raise prices mid-quarter. It expects further increases at the September launch, weighted to the high end, plus a foldable iPhone late in the year. Even with the raise the average target is below the market where the shares set a fresh all-time high above $323, running out ahead of the very analysts chasing them. →

Game Over. Remember Consoles? → A PlayStation reader poll had nearly half of respondents considering a jump to PC, put off by the end of physical games and the prospect of a $1,000 PS6. Reader polls are unreliable, with selection bias and complaints crowding out the satisfied. The real signal is elsewhere: consoles have been under disruption pressure for years, and Microsoft is now cutting thousands from Xbox. I called this more than a decade ago, and the game is still ending. →

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