At time of writing (December 12, 2019) AirPods Pro delivery wait time is over 4 weeks. It's been like this since they shipped. I tried stores in several countries and although units can make an appearance on a shelf, they sell out immediately.
AirPods are part of the "Wearables & Home" category for Apple which used to be called Other Products and include also the Watch, iPod, Apple TV, Beats and HomePod (among other items.) iPod revenues were broken out as recently as 2015 but as the graph below shows, there have been no specifics on any product in "Wearables & Home" since then.
Wearables, Home and Accessories in a historic perspective with the iPod.
It therefore falls upon us to estimate how much of the entire category is any one product. It's been very difficult as the only clues lie in growth rates, sometimes cited for the Apple Watch and sometimes for "Wearables" alone. As far as I can tell from the available clues, the split is roughly as shown between the Orange and Green areas. Orange reflects estimate for Watch and Green everything else.
This analysis helped me conclude the Apple Watch overtook the historic "peak iPod" which occurred in the fourth quarter of 2007 at $4 billion. My Watch revenue estimate was $4.2 billion in the fourth quarter of 2018. This conclusion was confirmed by statements from the Company.
The problem lately has been that AirPods have become huge unto themselves. There is literally no information about AirPods sales as a product category. The only option is to guess Watch and subtract it from Wearables and then guess again the portion of "non-Watch Wearables & Home" that is AirPods.
Looking forward to the next quarter, I am expecting a 51% increase y/y for Wearables and 24% growth in Watch. This results in a Watch revenues about $5.2 billion and non-Watch $5.7 billion. Now if we assume $1.7 billion for non-Watch-non-AirPods (i.e. Apple TV, HomePod, Beats, iPod, other) then this quarter AirPods will have overtaken peak iPod.
Remember that iPod was the phenomenon which reset all expectations for Apple. It caused Apple to cease calling itself Apple Computer. It (at least psychologically) laid the foundation for iPhone and everything else that followed. In 2005 and through 2007 Apple was "the iPod company". I remember people working in a large search engine company calling Apple "that media company" as a result of over-intellectualizing iTunes.
(One more footnote on the AirPods Pro is that at $250 a pair and $300 for Apple Watch, throwing in a case puts these attached accessories for an iPhone at roughly the same average selling price for the iPhone of a few years ago.)
For the AirPods to overtake the iPod highlights just what a phenomenal category Wearables has become. In combination with Home and other accessories the category is going to decidedly overtake the Mac, having already passed the iPad.
And so it goes, something dismissed as inconsequential–"does not move the needle"–ends up becoming a massive force of change. The iPod was that, the original Apple II, the Mac and yes, also the iPhone. It's the asymmetry of humility that this happens over and over again.
To hear more about the profundities of AirPods Pro tune in to the next Critical Path podcast.
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WWDC 2019 included a vast list of releases and it's quite difficult to summarize. The focus is always on software updates but this year the list seems more exhaustive than usual.
The highlights for me are:
WatchOS now includes direct App Store access. This continues the separation of the Watch from the iPhone, on a trajectory that remains predictable.
Hearing Health/Noise App/period and trends management extends the iPhone's health maintenance "jobs to be done".
AR & Swift extend the platform through Reality Kit and Reality Composer and Swift UI.
MacOS improves through a new Apple Music app, Sidecar iPad integration, Accessibility and "Find My" Mac offline beacons.
iPad and Mac are beginning to share Apps with Project Catalyst.
New Mac Pro and new XDR Display are quantum leapfrog leaps in the high-end performance computing market where Apple has lagged for a few years.
Sign-in with Apple is a huge and much needed update to identity management on-line. A big deal.
iPadOS introduced as fifth Apple OS. Rather than merging iPad and Mac which would be suggested by Project Catalyst, Apple preserves and sanctifies the modularity of form factors based on their differences rather than commonalities.
If there is one thing I took away as most significant it would be the iPadOS spin-off. I don't quite know how this will change the fortunes of the iPad but in declaring itself a platform distinct from iOS it signals that iPad can evolve rapidly in a new direction. The promise and problem with the iPad has always been that it was great hardware held back by software that was not able to take advantage of it.
The core apps, interfaces and connectivity were all constrained, which is not necessarily a bad thing. Constraints make a system and the constraints of the iPhone made it great. Not having a stylus, not having a menu system and not having windowing meant the UX had to be drastically simplified.
But apparently the iPad could not evolve without a re-evaluation of these constraints. The last iPad Pro release hinted at what was coming: it had a full-size keyboard and an immensely capable processor and screen.
So we saw new features such as split view for the same app, Files folder, doc sharing, USB and SD drives support, Zip/Unzip, Desktop class Safari optimized for touch. Download manager, custom fonts, new text editing gestures (copy/paste/floating keyboard). Pencil latency improvement. All these changes are geared toward "productivity" or Pro use.
And yet, the iPad is not Mac. It will remain separate and target Mac non-consumers. Indeed there are three times more iPad users than Mac users and it's quite possible that the iPad base can expand further with enhancement into productivity.
The iPad has not proven to be either an iPhone or a PC killer. It's just in between. It's not a bowl and it's not a swimming pool. It's a bathtub. And yes, bathtubs are never going to be as common as bowls but they have their uses and are not obsoleted by better water containers.
The Operating System idea here is a bit of a conceit. In terms of the kernel and the core APIs there are vast common grounds between all Apple's OSs. But what Apple calls an OS is not just the core code but also the positioning of the idea _to developers_. By branding iPadOS the company is signaling to developers that they should think about the iPad differently.
To a large extent they already do. Coding for iPad has always required a different design approach. But now perhaps Apple is drawing an explicit line enforcing the distinction.
Going back to the list of highlights above, none of them is a "home run", re-enforcing the idea that the company has run out of big ideas. But hitting 8 base hits yields the same result as two home runs. There is a consistent delivery of improvements here that can't be ignored. There's something to be said for polishing rocks until they turn into gems.
The iPhone is the most successful product of all time.
Over 1.6 billion have been sold. Including the iOS products it spun off, the total is over 2.2 billion. Of those 2.2 billion sold, 1.5 billion are still in use.
There are about 1 billion iPhone users.
Economically speaking, iPhone sales have reached one trillion dollars. ((The milestone of $1 trillion iPhone revenues was reached in the fourth quarter 2018 during which time the stock price of Apple fell by 40%.))
Since the iPhone launched, Apple's sales have totaled $1.918 trillion. Of those trillions about one half a trillion was accumulated in the form of income.
Of that half trillion in income, $360 billion was paid out to shareholders ((As a result, the number of outstanding shares has decreased by 29%)). and $131 billion was paid in taxes.
This sounds like a good business, but no business is good if it is static. What makes a business great is dynamism. The idea is to constantly maneuver for a new or enhanced way of doing business as technologies enable entrepreneurs to fundamentally change how value is captured or allocated.
The iPhone story isn't static, the "pivots" or change in direction are several:
The App Store, a platform for collaborative innovation where millions of developers are offered the chance to improve the product.
Accessories, a licensing model for third-party hardware that works with the iPhone
Distribution through multiple channels
Integration with other Apple Products
The marketing of older products alongside new ones at reduced prices
An expanded product portfolio with a broader range of prices
Trade-in and financing options
Each of these initiatives contributed to the iPhone growth story but the biggest change in business model was the addition of services. Apple Services grew out of the iTunes business that pre-dates the iPhone and was established to provide content for the iPod.
In 2006, the year before the iPhone launched, Apple customers spent $3.3 billion on iTunes, Software and Services. By 2018 the spending rate was $80.5 billion/yr. It's very possible that this year's spending rate will reach $100 billion/yr. This new division is simply called Services today and consists mainly of third-party apps and third-party content sales as well as licensing.
Recently Apple launched a set of new services that it will offer itself. This includes television, films, financial services and news. Apple already has a music service of its own and file storage (iCloud) both of which are offered as subscriptions.
Apps are also allowed to offer paid subscriptions, and that total has reached 390 million, growing at 30 million a quarter with an expected total of 500 million by 2020. That amounts to one subscription for every other iPhone in use.
Some would argue that even with a $43 billion revenue rate, ($80 billion billing rate) ((The difference is in the way Apple accounts for App Store revenues: declaring only the 30% portion of sales that it keeps as revenues, and not including the 70% that is paid out to developers. The "billing rate" is what consumers spend, the "revenue rate" is what Apple reports.)) Apple's business is still a hardware business and that comes with low margins, potential for disruption, non-recurring revenues and cyclicality.
This is not the case. Apples's business has high margins (64% gross margin for services, 34% for products), has been resilient over 12 years while attracting hundreds of imitators at lower price points, and has loyalty and satisfaction which results in more than 90% re-purchase rates. Cyclicality is driven by seasonality and product lifespans, not competition.
This common misconception of Apple is why it continues to be valued at a deep discount to not only peer companies who are services oriented (Google, Facebook, Microsoft and Amazon) but also at a discount to the overall market (the S&P 500).
Apple, since its inception, has always been oriented around its customers, not its products. The questions asked by management are "what can the company do to deliver experiences and satisfaction" rather than "what products can the company build".
Every company is bound by its capabilities but the best companies re-shape these bounds because they are defined by priorities.
A priorities-driven company habitually re-designs its processes and its resources. A resources- or process-driven company re-designs its priorities as its capabilities change.
Moving as it does between computers, devices, software, services, retail, logistics and manufacturing means that it's not classifiable as an "x" company where "x" is an industry sector. Rather, the company should be classified by the set of problems it seeks to solve (e.g. communications, community, productivity, creativity, wellbeing).
This disconnect between what people think Apple sells and what Apple builds is as perplexing as the cognitive disconnect between what companies sell and what customers buy.
Companies sell objects or activities that they can make or engage in but customers buy solutions to problems. It's easy to be fooled that these are interchangeable. ((They are only correlated. Purchase decisions are not *caused* by a product's existence. The real cause is a combination of need and supply and time and circumstance of purchase.))
Conversely Apple offers solutions to problems that are viewed, classified, weighed and measured as objects or activities by external observers. Again, it's easy to be fooled that these are the same.
This analysis is, of course, applicable to any company. Here I'm using Apple as a lens. This is because it's just so much easier to tell this story with the narratives and anti-narratives that are so widely disseminated.
The iMac launched May 6 1998, exactly 20 years ago. It is not the most significant computer to ever exist. It was a clear descendant of the original Mac which established the "all-in-one" desktop computer category. That category, to which it still belongs, is a modest segment. The last time Apple reported portable sales separately was in late 2012 when the desktops/servers and pro systems combined made up only 20% of all Mac sales by units. If iMac were 10% of Mac sales, it would represent about 2 million units in 2017.
Desktops evolved into laptops and personal computing evolved into pocket computing. Becoming more personal means more intimacy and this is leading to wearable computing. There is more beyond that to be sure.
But the iMac is a historically significant machine. It allowed Apple to start on a new trajectory. It did this by first offering a financial lifeline. Sales of Macs, which were at the time the only source of revenues for Apple, increased from 2.7 million to 3.8 million a year. This at a time when Windows PCs were shipping about 100 million units. That was enough to ensure survival. Today Mac units are five times higher while Windows PCs are about 2.5 times higher. The following graph shows the impact of iMac on the Mac's trajectory.
Second, the iMac was the first host of OS X, an operating system built on Unix which made it extremely flexible. iMac gave Apple the space for OS X to be developed and to be optimized for various hardware. The experience with OS X and its inherent scaleability (down as well as up) meant that it could be considered for the post-PC devices of the future.
Lastly, iMac's design screamed "consumer product" which went from signaling inferiority to superiority. It set a standard for novelty, creativity and dynamism in the category that was considered second-rate. In the early 2000s consumers began to lead in the adoption of new technologies. DVD drives, internet connectivity, wifi, instant messaging, media consumption exploded. All the while institutions, hung up on legacy, began to block technologies. At this pivotal moment, the iMac spoke with its looks. It didn't just imply a new order, it stated it.
To me the incredible aspect of the iMac's entry is its uncanny timing. It came not only just in time to save Apple but exactly half-way between the first two ages of computing. In the following graph showing "share of computing" you can see it as launching precisely at "peak Windows".
In retrospect you have to wonder if Apple, with the iMac, was lucky to survive into this next era or if that era would have ever happened without the iMac. It's a question of causality which quickly devolves into an un-winnable argument about stochastic vs. deterministic existence.
Regardless, the result was felt more than seen. The computing industry was pivoting. The results are seen also in the graphs above. The iMac came right in the middle of the "desert" of platform choice of the late 1990s. By the 2000s mobile platforms detonated on the scene. The iPod was Apple's first entry, in 2001, but it was not a computer. It was an appliance. A stepping stone at a time when the early platform contenders Nokia, Palm, Microsoft and BlackBerry surged before realizing that they did not have sound foundations upon which to build ecosystems. Their advances could not be consolidated.
The spoils went to the later entries of iOS and Android. The resulting disruption was shocking and disorienting. Not only did the old order get up-ended but the magnitude of the new was 100x the old. The iMac enabled at least a trillion dollars of value to be created and made Apple the biggest company in the world.
As you would expect, at the time, 20 years ago, none of this change was anticipated. iMac was a 'cute' computer. Toy-like and obviously unprofessional. It attracted and relished contempt.
So now we are at a point where the second era of computing is at its apex. With markets near saturation, the device business is inflecting from growth to possible stagnation if not decline. There are two platforms--though unlike Windows, Android is fragmented and iOS is not just on one form factor. Nevertheless there is stasis. The touch UI which begat nine billion devices is normative. The next interaction metaphor has not emerged as an obvious successor.
The question for today is what is the new iMac? What is the enabler for change? It's not easy to spot. It is not the thing of the future but it points to the future.
The last time Apple reported iPod unit and revenues was for the third quarter of 2014. Thereafter the product segment called “Other Products” was used to include what was formerly the iPod segment and the “Accessories” segment. Exactly two quarters later Apple began to sell the Apple Watch. Apple Watch was not broken out as a separate product segment and remained a part of Other Products along with iPod touch, Beats, Apple TV, and Apple-branded and third-party accessories. Soon the HomePod will also join the Other products.
The combined iPod, Accessories and “Other” product sales are shown in the following graph. ((Two quarters include estimated iPod revenues: Q4 ’14 and Q1 ’15. The iPod contribution is estimated with a simple extrapolation using the previous four quarters’ average rate of decline))
Note that an attempt is made to estimate the contribution of Apple Watch to the mix. The method is simple: if you can estimate the non-Watch sales trajectory then the Watch is the difference between Other total and this trajectory.
If we discount the iPod, the non-Watch revenues come down to Apple TV and Beats, mainly. Note that the data shows the contribution of Beats (Q4 2010) but it’s hard to parse specifically the growth of Beats. Since the Watch launched we also saw the introduction of AirPods and new Apple TVs, both of which probably contributed to some growth to “Other excluding Watch.”
We can take a stab at the first 6 quarters of Watch by projecting Other with some nominal growth. Thereafter Watch can be modeled using growth assumptions. Apple stated that growth was above 50% during the past three quarters. There are a few quarters where we must make guesses but overall the picture that emerges, shown below, is fairly robust. Note that I’ve included estimates for the fourth quarter of 2017 assuming continuing 50% growth. This is driven primarily by the launch of the LTE-enabled Series 3.
The result is a cumulative sales value of $14.3 billion and a volume of 40 million units (based on average pricing assumptions).
But what most catches the eye is the transition from iPod to Watch. Watch entered nearly at the same time as iPod bowed out. Its contribution to sales seems to mirror the iPod as well. The interesting question then becomes if the Watch will eventually match and indeed exceed the revenues from iPod.
I’d say the better question is _when_ Watch will overtake iPod. From a revenue point of view, I believe next year’s fourth quarter will see the Watch generating higher revenues than the highest quarter for the iPod. ((That was in Q4 2007 when iPod managed $4 billion.))
In terms of yearly unit sales it may take longer. The biggest year for iPod units was 2008 when about 55 million iPods shipped. Watch is now running at about 16million. If it could sustain 30% growth then it would take until 2022. 40% growth would mean 2021 and 50% 2020.
It’s not easy to predict growth but my bet remains that Watch will get there eventually becoming the third most popular Apple product. Perhaps even second.
Overtaking the iPod is quite an achievement considering that the iPod was once synonymous with Apple itself. Although Watch may overcome iPod, Apple may never be known as the Watch company. That’s perhaps for the best. I’ve noted before that Apple was once seen as the Apple II company, became the Mac company then the iPod company. Now of course it is thought of as the iPhone company though it’s no more that than it ever was any of the other things.
Microsoft has announced that by the end of the year the Groove music service will be phased out. Users are being offered the option to move their music libraries into Spotify.
This brings to an end a long story of Microsoft in the music distribution business. It started nearly 15 years ago with technologies in Windows that allowed for purchase and playback of various media formats. Microsoft sought to enable a large number of music retailers to market music through its formats and DRM and transaction clearing.
Services such as AOL MusicNow, Yahoo! Music Unlimited, Spiralfrog, MTV URGE, MSN Music, Musicmatch Jukebox, Wal-Mart Music Downloads, Ruckus, PassAlong, Rhapsody, iMesh and BearShare and dozens of hardware players licensed Windows formats. Almost all of these services have shut down and the devices disappeared.
The next stage was to offer an integrated experience through the Microsoft Zune player and Zune Marketplace music service. This too failed and was replaced by the Xbox Music brand in 2012. On July 6, 2015, Microsoft announced the re-branding of Xbox Music as Groove to tie in with the release of Windows 10.
There was a time when Microsoft was thought of as the certain winner in media distribution. Inserting media into the Windows hegemony was classic "control point" strategy: owning the access points was a sure way to collect a tax on what transacted through the network.
Instead we are facing a market where media is consumed through new access points: phones, tablets and TV boxes. Netflix, Spotify, Roku, Google, Amazon and Apple are all offering distribution and some are investing in original programming.
It's perhaps worthwhile to recall that Microsoft and Apple both started their media efforts around the same time. Apple's iTunes is 16 years old and the iTunes Music Store opened in 2003, almost 15 years ago. Today Apple is transitioning to streaming with 30 million subscribers. The graph below shows the history of subscription growth to Apple Music and Spotify.
Apple Music is a small part of Apple Services (part of the orange area below).
On a yearly basis Apple Services are this year crossing the $50 billion gross revenue run rate. This year Apple released a new Apple TV 4K and is releasing a new smart speaker called HomePod.
The contrast between Microsoft and Apple is most visibly between the Mac and PC. But the story of how media paralleled mobility and how Microsoft struggled with both is perhaps a cautionary tale.
Microsoft saw the limits of modularity when new product categories emerged and when new user behaviors were created. They attempted to pivot into being more integrated but those efforts also failed. The efforts continue today with Surface devices; looking forward they will continue with AR/VR and perhaps a pivot of Xbox..
But the long arc of history shows how hard it is to succeed in vertical integration after you build on horizontal foundations. Generations of managers graduated from the modular school of thought, specializing rather than generalizing. Now they are facing an integrated experiential world where progress depends on wrapping the mind around very broad systems problems.
Entire industries are facing this orthogonal pivot: media, computing and transportation come to mind. Huge blind spots exist as we see only what we've been trained to see.
"Our Model 3 program is on track to start limited vehicle production in July and to steadily ramp production to exceed 5,000 vehicles per week at some point in the fourth quarter and 10,000 vehicles per week at some point in 2018.”
Overall 2018 production guidance has been 500,000 units and 1,000,000 units in 2020.
The company shipped 220 Model 3s in the July, August and September months. This is well below the expectation of 75,000 that the 2016 guidance would suggest ((100,000 to 200,000 for the second half of 2017 suggests an average of 150,000 for the six months or 75,000 per quarter)) or the 1,630 that might be suggested by the "production grows exponentially" July proclamation.
I entered the Q3 production data and kept the previous run rate predictions for Q4 and 2018 and 2020 in the following graph.
Note that the graph includes all previous shipments of Tesla cars throughout its history.
The red bar represents an estimate consisting of the sum of 10,000 Model 3 in October, 15,000 in November and 20,000 in December. This is consistent with reaching the target production of 20,000 in December.
The purple bars are distributing the planned production evenly throughout the 2018 and 2020 calendar years.
Before asking whether these predictions can be relied upon, I'd like to focus on the history of Model S and X production/shipments. Specifically the last five quarters.
Q3 2016: 24,500
Q4 2016: 22,200
Q1 2017: 25,000
Q2 2017: 22,900
Q3 2017: 25,930
Q4 2017: 25,845 ((This is an estimate based on another point of guidance: 100,000 models X and S for the 2017 year.))
Growth in this total figure has been remarkably low. Only about 4% y/y in the last quarter and sequentially the total has bounced in a narrow range.
This level (about 24,000 units/quarter on average) is a distinct plateau but it's also well above the average of the previous 4 quarters of about 15,000 units/quarter. It suggests that there was a “quantum leap” in production at the end of 2016, to a new plateau.
So the question is why, with so much pressure to produce cars to meet presumed unlimited demand, is output so limited?
To see just how limited, consider the rate of output. For the past 15 months and near future, the output is equivalent to 264 cars per day. If the Fremont factory is running three shifts, 11 cars are produced every hour. This is equivalent to a cycle time or takt time of 5.5 minutes.
This would be an tragic cycle time. Most car lines aim for run times between 1 and 2 minutes per station. For example BMW's Spartanburg plant produces 1400 units per day which yields a cycle time of 1 min. ((This assumes one line. The chassis/engine marriage step is clocked at 3 minutes so the worst case is that there are three lines running at 3 min. cycle time each.))
This measure of performance is so important that it drives the depreciation and capitalization schedule for tooling and the very lifeblood of the company: capital expenditures. An underutilized factory is a giant hole in a financial statement and destroys value as much as inventory does. Every manufacturer strives for maximum utilization and is sunk if it does not achieve a minimum threshold.
So why, after a few years of Model S production, is Tesla running at one fifth the speed of a BMW or Toyota plant? One obvious answer is that the company is not running 3 shifts but perhaps 2 or even 1. But why would they shut down the line when demand is infinite? If it is finite, is it really only 25k at most per quarter? That’s a paltry number considering the size of the market they operate in. BMW alone ships 2 million vehicles a year. Tesla X/S topping out at 100k a year suggests a serious limit to their opportunity.
Another possible explanation is that there aren't sufficient battery deliveries for continuous production. We hear about issues with battery throughput as transients that slow production. But the production data we have spans an 18 month period during which the speed has hardly budged. During this time additional battery capacity in the form of a Gigafactory has been announced.
If this giant new factory can’t reliably deliver batteries for 25k cars/quarter then how are we to believe that it can deliver for 125k units in a few months? If it's not batteries, then what? I don't know of other subsystems that are chronically constrained that we can point a finger at. Almost all other parts in a Tesla are sourced from existing supply chains.
The most likely suspect is that Tesla's S/X line is not fully operational. When you study production lines, generally they either work at a decent clip or they don't work at all. They are not designed to be dialed down to be as slow as 5 min for every 10 feet of car. It's much more likely that the line is idle for long periods of time. Perhaps even 2/3 of the time.
This is what is so mystifying about Tesla's exuberant predictions for the Model 3. The X/S line is bogged down and inefficient five years after production start but we are to believe that the Model 3 line will come to operate at >5x speed within weeks, on a new product? Maybe the X/S line is a failed experiment. Maybe the company is moving to "Version 2" and leaving the cruft in Version 1 without fixing it.
Maybe.
Tesla's asymmetric approach to automobile product development and distribution and ownership experience are key advantages but their asymmetry to functioning best practice production systems is a key disadvantage. The big competitive question is will incumbents get good at intelligent EV experiences faster than Tesla gets good at production.
Outsiders might ask "How hard can car building be?" and vote for Tesla winning this race.
There is no data on how fast an incumbent learns the EV experience delivery process, as it's never been tried before, but there is data on how fast a manufacturing company learns lean production. Those times were measured in decades.
[UPDATE]
In the week that followed this post new claims have been made on Tesla's production system by other publications.
Wards Auto published a story on problems with automating the Model 3 production line.
Wall Street Journal published a story on claims that Model 3 production was constrained by hand-building on parts of the line.
Edward Niedermeyer wrote in the Daily Kanban about regulatory documents that show limitations in production of the Model 3.
The most relevant quote to this post is the Wards claim that:
Its current production line in Fremont, CA, can’t build vehicles at [5,000 weekly] rate unless it runs two 10-hour shifts seven days a week, which is not likely for an all-new vehicle, even if everything goes smoothly. The plant presently runs two 8-hour shifts five days a week.
If this is true then the current Model S/X line is limited to about 50% of capacity or about 25 cars/working hour. This is equivalent to a takt time of 2.4 min/station. This is certainly much better than the estimated 5.5 and within a range of reasonableness, but one has to ask why is the line not operating more than half the time?
When I wrote about there being "infinite demand" for the X/S, the logic was that the X/S was still a niche product at 100k/yr and the category into which is sells is assumed to have a lot more headroom for their entry.
The observation that production is topping at 50% capacity for 18 months in a market that is quickly being targeted by competitors remains interesting to me.
You've probably heard of Jony at Apple but probably don't know about Johny.
Jony is a celebrity executive known as the face of Apple Design. Johny is the executive in charge of custom silicon and hardware technologies across Apple’s entire product line.
Under Johny's leadership, Apple has shipped 1.7 billion processors in more than 20 models and 11 generations. Currently Apple ships more microprocessors than Intel. ((Trailing 12 months’ PC shipments 265 million. Equivalent iOS devices 281 million. Not included are Apple processors in Apple TV.))
The Apple A11 Bionic processor has 4.3 billion transistors, six cores and an Apple custom GPU using a 10nm FinFET technology. Its performance appears to be almost double that of competitors and in some benchmarks exceeds the performance of current laptop PCs.
A decade after making the commitment to control its critical subsystems in its (mobile) products, Apple has come to the point where is dominates the processor space. But they have not stopped at processors. The effort now spans all manners of silicon including controllers for displays, storage, sensors and batteries. The S series in the Apple Watch the haptic T series in the MacBook, the wireless W series in AirPods are ongoing efforts. The GPU was conquered in the past year. Litigation with Qualcomm suggests the communications stack is next.
This across-the-board approach to silicon is not easy or fast or cheap. This multi-year, multi-billion dollar commitment is rooted in the Jobsian observation that the existing supplier network is not good enough for what you're driving at. Tiny EarPods, Smart Watches, Augmented Reality, Adaptive Acoustics require wrapping your arms around all parts of the problem. The integration and control it demands are in contrast to the modular approach of assembling off-the-shelf components into a good-enough configuration.
There are times and places where modules are adequate and times and places where they aren't. The decision depends on whether you are creating new experiences or new "measures of performance" vs. optimizing for cost within existing experiences or measures of performance.
The very notion of a microprocessor is a rejection of the discrete component designs that preceded it. Earlier computers had central processors made up of many discrete components. VLSI stands for Very Large Scale Integration with emphasis on Integration. As computing has progressed toward ambience and ubiquity the idea of using discrete components became normative again but that was not considered sufficient by Apple.
So while the "Silicon" in Silicon Valley has come to be seen as an anachronism, silicon development today means competitive advantage. The only problem is that it takes years, decades even to establish competence. The same duration that it took for the building of Apple as a design-centric business fronted by Jony Ive.
Apple also now needs to be understood along the dimension of silicon-centric engineering as led by Johny Srouji.
It was a pleasure to spend a day with Henrik, the leading tech journalist in Denmark, and the Micromobility Summit at the Techfestival in Copenhagen.
We did the recording live in front of a large audience the evening after the event and it is already causing a stir in Denmark. I think it's worth a listen (about 30 min.)
The iPhone is the best selling product ever, making Apple perhaps the best business ever. Because of the iPhone, Apple has managed to survive to a relatively old age. Not only did it build a device base well over 1 billion it engendered loyalty and satisfaction described only by superlatives.
To summarize I can offer two numbers:
1,162,796,000 iPhones sold (to end of March 2017).
$742,912,000,000 in revenues. $1 trillion will be reached in less than 18 months.
But more important than any of these quantifiable measures of success are the unquantified accomplishments. These are the changes we note only when flipping an A/B switch on a decade. The changes ushered by the iPhone have been as momentous as those of the Ford Model T. Or those of electricity, telegraph, radio or TV.
These are epoch-making technologies. They shape the fiber of society and the definition of quality of life. They obsolete entire economies and change the balance of political power. They shift the center of gravity of society.
To glimpse the change you only need to observe how we shifted how we spend our time. The fact that 2 billion people are using Facebook every day. That the device is looked at for 2 hours a day. That it's unlocked 80 times a day. That it holds almost all our memories and our conversations and all our secrets. That it created new modes of communication and destroyed others, ancient and respected.
That it substituted communications, entertainment, and interaction. That swiping became the most used human gesture. That we communicate with photos and not with words. That, like the voice call, transportation now comes to us rather than we to it. That it can answer to our voice. That we can never be lost again. That it makes us all publishers.
That all this happened while the product itself was always perceived as fragile, vulnerable, copyable, doomed to early demise. That imitators outnumber it 10 to 1. That it somehow found ways to become better even though we exhaust what we can ask of it.
For all these reasons I believe that future historians will point to the iPhone as the technological product that defined the 21st century. Much will follow from it and it may become something altogether different but it set humanity on a new course.
