Asymco Bulletin 030 - Sep 13, 2026
by Horace Dediu
The Asymmetric Weekly
Invitations
Asymco Office Hours Duo: Sunnyvale and Boston → Two cities, two sessions, two happy hours, marking Apple’s first keynote under John Ternus.
West Coast: Sunnyvale, Friday, September 11. This session has now taken place. Asymco One subscribers: stay tuned for the recording and transcript.
East Coast: Boston, Friday, September 18, 4–5:30pm ET. In person at Boston Seaport, followed by an Asymco Happy Hour from 5:30–7pm ET, or join remotely. Register for tickets, in person or remote. Asymco One subscribers are guaranteed seats, can sign up for free, and have access to recordings and transcripts. →
Research
Apple iPhone Event First Impressions
From the Steve Jobs Theater I’m writing while still in the SJ Theater in Cupertino after the end of the event and the media frenzy around the demo devices. The atmosphere was noticeably more enthusiastic and the venue was packed. First impression was that John Ternus was already received as a “star” with a standing ovation to on-stage appearance and cheering at his video introduction from Tim Cook. Clearly the audience is already excited by his presence if not charismatic performance. The products were on par with outstanding polish and refinement. The details especially health and assistive features are truly →
Is the Stairway to Heaven still working?
Time to re-frame pricing on a daily basis The launch of the iPhone Duo and the surge in memory pricing has caused a disturbance in the force. The new Stairway graph is shown. A few notes: The process of lowering prices for n-1 devices has reversed. Previous generation iPhone prices have gone up for the first time ever. This is mitigated by the fact that “n-1” is not quite apparent for the 17 as it’s still the current model in the mid-range. The 17e and the 16 are still in the roster →
Are iPhones too cheap?
Prices for the iPhone 18 Pro and Duo are lower than expected When the iPhone Duo price was announced in the Steve Jobs theater I was the only one applauding. Prior to the Duo bombshell, the iPhone 18 Pro prices were announced to be a mere $100 higher than the iPhone 17 Pro and the Apple watch prices were kept steady while the AirPods prices actually came down (for one of the cases). A stunned silence was clearly warranted but applause? Of course, these are the starting prices and the higher memory/storage configurations are sharply higher. The top of the →
Nota Bene
Apple acquires Sonera. The next pivot point for interfaces? → Apple has always placed itself at the interface layer between human and machine, from the original personal computer through the mouse, the scroll wheel, multi-touch, spatial computing and audio. Every acquisition that detects or deduces human intention, gestures, motion, biometrics, health, belongs to that same pattern. Sonera built a room-temperature magnetometer that reads the weak magnetic fields produced by neural activity without touching skin, a sensing modality I was not even aware of. That is the first practical path to a non-invasive brain-computer interface, which is to say the next stage of human-computer interaction. →
Apple now in third place in US PC market share → Apple passed Lenovo into third place in the US with shipments up 32.1%, lifting its share of the US consumer PC segment to 29.4%, while business shipments grew 50.6%. Dell fell 8.8% as component allocation moved away from entry-level systems and its Chromebook shipments collapsed 47%. Consumer PC shipments are expected to decline further this year. Apple is taking share in a contracting market, which is the only kind of share worth taking. →
iPhone 17 is the best selling iPhone ever with first year revenue of $170 billion → The iPhone 17 series took more than $170 billion in first-year revenue, an 11% increase over the 16 series, with the base model alone growing revenue 1.3x over its predecessor and ranking as the best-selling smartphone in the world in the first half. China drove the gain, up 35% on wholesale revenue and close to a quarter of series revenue, on base-variant upgrades. The lineup worked because Pro features moved down to the base tier. That is a tough act for the 18 to follow. →
Apple Watch Is Growing in a Shrinking Market → Global smartwatch shipments fell 4% year over year in the second quarter while Apple’s climbed 14%, the fastest growth of the five largest brands, taking share from 17% to 20.1%. It is not only phones and Macs and tablets. The pattern now shows up in every category at once. That is more than a memory shortage can explain. →
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