The Critical Path #152
Horace talks about Jony Ive's promotion and answers listener questions on everything from Apple TV to the need for companies to "have children".
Source: The Critical Path #152
Latest from Asymco
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The Critical Path #151
Horace and Anders discuss Comcast, cable companies and lowest common denominator content on television screens everywhere. After the break, Horace takes listener questions from Twitter.
Source: The Critical Path #151
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Is Tesla Disruptive?
Research #Industry #Theory · 72 comments
To the analyst, the car industry is a wonderful study. Unlike some other "high technologies," whose market births and deaths are separated by a few changes of the seasons the automobile industry has been around for well over a century. It has been sustained through dozens, perhaps hundreds of innovations. Almost everything about the car of a century ago has been improved.
Not only improvements to the product itself but improvements to the infrastructure that supports it: roads, gas stations, services, insurance, regulation. At the same time, its numbers have increased steadily as the car has spread to all corners of the world through waves of increased production and distribution. Although invented in Europe, the production system that allowed it to reach the mass market took hold in the US. That production system was then exported to Europe then to Japan and then to Korea and now to China.
Figures 3.3.9 and 3.3.10 from Arnulf Grubler's The Rise and Fall of Infrastructures
However, throughout this century of improvement, the business structure—the way money is made—has not changed. Even with the arrival of Volkswagen in the 1960s and Japanese automakers in the 80s, the network of incumbents has not been displaced. Newcomers have taken share, but there have been few exits suggesting that classical disruption has not taken place.
When we look at the reasons for the share displacement that did take place, we see innovation in production systems and distribution as the core causes. We see new manufacturing processes and competition against non-consumption. What we don’t see is new technologies. We don’t see diesel engines or anti-lock braking or crumple zones or fuel injection or radial tires or airbags or automatic transmission or air conditioning or electronic ignition or safety glass, or any of the other hundreds of technologies that have been adopted as causing any change in market share.
Every innovation tends to diffuse rapidly throughout the industry, being widely adopted by all manufacturers. Production systems such as the ones from Ford and Toyota have been much slower to be adopted which has offered those innovators an advantage for a few decades, but they too have eventually been widely copied and created normative behavior. The opening of new markets like Asia, Eastern Europe, Latin America, Africa and China have created opportunities for local manufacturers but eventually those advantages too have or will be diminished with time.
So, given this, we have to ask if the the availability of new power storage technologies would allow an early mover to displace and move aside these established makers. To answer in the positive would imply that the challenger has an asymmetric business model—one which causes the incumbents to flee in the opposite direction. But Tesla is manufacturing cars using the same JIT processes and ramping quite slowly. Toyota-style process-driven innovation does not seem to be even in the works. There is no shortage of manufacturing capacity, indeed there is too much.
Furthermore, Tesla is selling cars in established markets competing against existing consumption. Volkswagen Beetle or Model T style competition against non-consumption does not appear to be on offer.
Tesla's product introduction rate is relatively sedate, so a higher rate of product development which might let them “turn inside” the incumbents, does not seem likely.
Finally Tesla is introducing products priced well above average appealing to the wealthiest of customers, again causing us to ask how this might cause a luxury company to look at their solution and exclaim “Not for us!”.
Looking from every angle I am unable to find the way that Tesla is asymmetric. Disruption theory suggests that whatever causes it to survive or prosper will be embraced and extended by competitors precisely because it will also cause those competitors to survive and prosper.
The auto industry may be a lot slower than the computer industry to respond. But once the industry embraces battery-based power, it will convert a world-wide production and distribution system to sustain itself.
That does not mean Tesla is a bad business. They may carry on with Porsche-like or even BMW volumes for a long time. But that’s not a disruptive outcome, it's a niche strategy.
There is one more point. As Tesla has chosen to share its intellectual property and as Elon Musk has stated publicly, they welcome others to build the same cars they do. So by their own admission the company does not seek to disrupt. Disruption is a competitive stance.
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The Asymco Trilogy with Horace Dediu Part 3 - The Asian Cars Edition - Analyse Asia with Bernard Leong
In the last and final part of the trilogy, Horace discussed the Japanese automotive industry, and provided interesting insights into how Japanese car culture contrasts against the European and US counterparts. Using the innovator’s stopwatch framework, Horace explained the challenges on how Tesla, Google, Uber and Amazon could disrupt the car industry, and provide some thoughts on what approach Apple might take on creating the car if they are doing it
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The Critical Path #150: Circling Back
Horace interviews Anders about Goldman Sachs' investment in Internet finance company Circle and we take listener questions over Twitter.
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The Asymco Trilogy with Horace Dediu Part 2 - Apple in Asia & Luxury - Analyse Asia with Bernard Leong
Horace Dediu, current fellow of the Clayton Christensen Institute and founder of Asymco.com joined us for an epic and insightful discussion focusing on few key interesting topics: (a) new market disruption theories, (b) Apple in China and the luxury market and (c) the Japanese automotive industry and how it shapes up against disruption from Tesla, Uber and Apple. In the second part of the trilogy, Horace discussed how Apple has managed to navigate the Asian markets with a combination of building the best product and building strategic partnerships with patience and grow the market with the right timing of the correct localised product, for example, the iPhone 6 Plus. Horace also pushed against the notion that Apple is really entering the luxury market, by applying “Jobs to be Done” perspective (used by Bob Moesta in his interviews) to the issue.
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Schiller's Law
We know how many iPhones Apple ships but we don't know exactly how many of each model. We can try to come close in such estimates of "mix" by looking also at the market pricing of the phones and the average price Apple obtains ((ASP = Revenue/Units shipped. However, note that there are deferrals in revenue as part of this.))
Combining what we know with some guesses allows some of us to estimate the composition of iPhone models in any given quarter's sales. Here is a graph showing my estimates:
Having this, we can then assess how each generation of iPhones has performed. Remember that although we had a new iPhone for each of the last eight years, there are only 5 generations in total. Starting with the 3G (second generation) the generations were two yearly product cycles long.
The resulting estimates for generational growth are shown below.
I included a second graph with revenues. Note that the iPhone 5 and iPhone 6 have not run their course. History suggests at least a five year run for any one generation and the 5 is at less than three years old and the 6 is at less than one.
The interesting question is therefore not whether each generation sells more than its predecessor but whether it does so by a substantial multiple. I drew in outline a few estimates on future volumes for the 5 through its end of life and for the 6 for the current and next year. Of course these are highly speculative but the question of how much can be expected from these generational leaps is interesting.
Recall that
When assessing sales for a new model of the iPhone, Apple used an easy shorthand: "Each new generation sold approximately equal to all previous generations combined."
Phil Schiller's Testimony in Apple v. Samsung trial
Such a pattern of growth, which I call "Schiller's Law" is extremely difficult to maintain and probably won't apply in the case of the 5 or 6. However the growth of the overall franchise is very apparent. In particular you can see how first year sales have a very healthy pattern of growth, especially when measured in terms of revenues.
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The Asymco Trilogy With Horace Dediu 1 - New Market Disruption by analyseasia
Horace Dediu, current research fellow of the Clayton Christensen Institute and founder of Asymco.com joined us for an epic and insightful discussion focusing on few key interesting topics: (a) new market disruption theories, (B) Apple in China and the luxury market and (c) the Japanese automotive industry and how it shapes up against disruption from Tesla, Uber and Apple. In the first of the trilogy, Horace discussed the origins of Asymco.com and also why he has used Apple as the lens to understand innovation and technology disruption. We also traced back to other Apple-like companies in the past such as Sony in Asia, and look at how Apple and Pixar has displayed a different kind of "DNA" against innovative companies in the past. Last but not least, we discussed the evolution and future of Google and where it might lead them to.
Listen to it here.
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Unicornia
Research #Industry #Theory · 14 comments
Unicorns typically are valued on the basis of number of users. While they are not yet monetizing those users, their growth and engagement metrics are expected to be off the charts. As there are no revenues (or profits) the $billion valuation hinges on a nominal value of $/user. That figure is based on comparable companies (e.g. Facebook) which do monetize their users.
Since the unicorn's capitalization/user defines its valuation, which company should be considered comparable? Unfortunately they range widely. There are many alternatives. The graph below shows a few Market Cap/Mobile User rates ranging from $45 for Yelp to $747 for Alibaba.
Note that I've also added companies which may not be considered as unicorn comparables because they are not usually valued on a per-user basis. Apple, Microsoft, Google and Amazon are priced by product sales, typically. However, most of them operate and self-define as service organizations. Microsoft has been "monetizing users" for decades using a recurring revenue model. It has a "SaaS" business logic for most of its revenues. Google ((Google users are estimated at 2 billion active Android/GMS devices)) likewise. Amazon reports its active users every quarter and obviously is measuring itself by that metric.
Apple ((The assumption here is that Apple has 520 million active users which is based on iOS devices in use estimates)) is the least likely to be seen as a company whose value is a function of user base. Nonetheless it behaves entirely on that basis. The company's entire strategy depends on satisfying its customers and building its brand which can only have one outcome: loyalty and repeat purchases. The services and software they offer can be seen as supporting that brand loyalty which is converted to profit through an above-average selling price.
Being mature of business model therefore does not exclude a company from being valued like all the kids are these days.
So, if we do look at the value/user metric we might as well look at the revenues, operating profit and growth data.
Unicorns are therefore characterized as having negligible revenue or profit but significant growth. The growth of Alibaba, Tencent, LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, Snapchat and Yelp should be seen in the 50% y/y range. The growth of mature companies is more modest: Microsoft (<10%), Google (12%), Amazon (15%).
Apple is an exception with recent growth in the 30% to 40% range.
Markets therefore value internet services at multiples of 10 to 20x revenues and 50x at least in terms of operating income. These multiples don't yet apply to Unicorns, since they typically don't have revenues, but the expectations are typically in this range once they do.
Mature product companies are valued more cheaply with 2x revenues for Amazon (a retailer with zero margins) up to Google with near 6x. Apple and Microsoft are in the middle at 4x revenues.
Mature company value as a function of income is also much lower ranking from about 12 for Apple to 22 for Google. Amazon's multiple is astronomical only because it has almost zero income.
Finally, when considering growth and income together ((When seen into the future this is the PEG ratio or Share Price/Earnings/Growth. When seen into the past, this is the PETG or Share Price/Earnings/Trailing Growth)) both emerging services and product companies are priced between 1.3 and 2.5. The outliers are Amazon due to its lack of income (PETG of 358) and Apple with its enormous income (PETG of 0.4).
This last ratio has had a "rule of thumb" of 1.0 being the "fair value" with <1 being seen as under-valued for growth and >1 being over-valued. Alternatively it can be seen as either pessimism about sustainability or optimism, respectively.
Clearly Unicorn Mania (or Unicornia) is a reflection of an optimism around new market disruptions in many industries where software has suddenly become ingestible. Old-school software companies are seen as less exciting in this context. If only they could take part in these new market creating opportunities then maybe they too could benefit from this optimism.
Now that would be crazy talk.
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iPhone, killer
Research #Industry · 253 comments
Searching for "iPhone killer" returns millions of hits. It's hard to remember any phone/product/service/platform/initiative/merger/startup which was not at some point considered an iPhone killer. A sampling is offered here.
In reality, the killers seem to have all faded away while the iPhone continues. We could just shake our heads and move on, but a deeper analysis is possible. Take a look at the graph above. Note that iPhone's (and hence Apple's) ascent has not caused decline in its nominal competitors. When seen in the context of the graph above, the success of the iPhone has in fact been complementary to those companies who would be its killers.
Consider that the iPhone drives a large portion of Google's revenues as it is the home to many Google services and engagement through the iPhone is higher than any other platform, including Google's own. iPhone users tend to make better customers. In exchange Google pays a great deal for traffic acquisition on iOS devices. The placement of search on Safari is probably the biggest single cost item on Google's income statement ((Estimates are a few billion dollars a year.))
The iPhone example drew Google to build Android as a facsimile and that, coupled with Brobdingnagian spending on marketing, led to Samsung's Galaxy success. That success seems to have peaked and the brand is now a victim of low-end disruptors which copied it and the iPhone in turn. However, Samsung electronics benefits from the iPhone in terms of its semiconductor division. Apple is Samsung's biggest customer and the semiconductor division is now the largest source of operating profits.
The explosion of Android has led to IP licensing revenues for Microsoft and now Microsoft is extending its software applications to iOS, hoping to participate in the iOS ecosystem rather than competing with it. The time may come when Microsoft shows growth from the iPhone.
Finally, although it may seem oblique, Amazon is benefiting from the iPhone. Instead of killing it with the Fire ((presumably as a low-end disruption)), the iPhone and iPad offered much more mobile shopping opportunities to the Amazon store. Data shows that iOS leads in shopping traffic and order size precisely at a time when Amazon obtains its largest volumes. Amazon's AWS also handles a great deal of iOS-originated traffic.
This alternate reality shows that the benefits from the iPhone revolution are broad and deep. It's not just the direct revenues (($25 billion paid so far)) from app sales on the App Store but also the creation of entire new communications modalities (Instagram, Snapchat, WhatsApp) new services (Uber, Airbnb) and the multi-billion dollar accessories markets. These benefits are largely unmeasured and therefore not visible in accounting systems. They are perceivable however.
Users perceive the value, developers perceive the value and, in the end, the only account that matters, the brand, accrues these perceptions to grow in value.
As the brand flourishes, the perception of vulnerability dissipates and the narrative shifts from Apple getting killed to killing it.
It's taken eight years and 500 million loyal users but, perhaps, just perhaps, this change in perception is entering the collective consciousness.
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Winning Against Non-consumption
Research #Industry · 17 comments
In the fourth quarter of 2013, mobile phone sales in mature regions fell due to weaker demand."Mature markets face limited growth potentialis the markets are saturated with smartphone sales, leaving little room for growth with declining feature phone market and a longer replacement cycle," said Anshul Gupta, principal research analyst at Gartner. "Lack of compelling hardware innovation has further exacerbated replacement cycles for high-end smartphones in 2013 because consumers don't find enough reasons to upgrade." - Gartner
Anshul Gupta's assertion of market saturation was not the first. IDC also cited "a number of mature markets nearing smartphone saturation" in late 2013.
Shortchanging the smartphone market is nothing new. It was happening very early in the market's formation when initial growth was not as rapid as expected. I recall Nokia managers disappointed with sales growth losing faith in smartphones in 2004. Eleven years later, the market is still growing.
comScore reported that during the first quarter of 2015 the US market was adding over two million new smartphone users every month. These are not two million units sold every month but two million new users who began using smartphones for the first time ever, every month.
Since the end of 2013 when both IDC and Gartner declared the onset of saturation in "mature regions" ((The US is the most mature by penetration data)) 31.5 million new-to-smartphones Americans adopted the product. That's an addition of 11% of the sampled market.
And the sampled market is just a subset of the addressable market. comScore only counts 'primary phones' in use and excludes company-purchased devices and any users below age 13.
So according to comScore's data, the US market is at 77% smartphone usage. My assumption is that saturation would come at the earliest at 90% and could be 100%. ((Of the market comScore measures)) The fact that conversion to smartphones is still proceeding at roughly the same rate it has been for five years, makes this assumption pretty safe.
The pattern of growth fits a diffusion S curve (Logistic curve) as closely as ever:
Note that the curve continues to rise even into 2020, and that this is the US only.
The US is the most highly penetrated market but it's not the biggest. That would be China. So it's not surprising that two years after declaring US growth was over, IDC claims "China's smartphone market has reached saturation".
Chinese penetration is far below the US. It was estimated at 43% by the end of 2014. If we assume Chinese users are no less hungry for information than US consumers, then why should Chinese stop adopting the technology at less than half of US levels of use?
That would be risky.
This understanding of the maximum potential of a market — its highest level of user adoption — is crucial for product development. Paying attention to short term sales trends blinds you to the power of the job your product is hired to do. Your product's purpose is not to be sold, but to be hired. If your product is powerful enough, it can be hired for universal jobs and it should be desired by all consumers, not just the fickle.
Being patient for growth means that you can release features when the majority of users can absorb them, not just when early adopters choose to play with them. Often, early adopters offer feedback which is off-putting to later, mainstream adopters. In engineering and design one has to always make compromises. The right balance at the right time avoids overshooting a market or under-performing against competitors.
There are plenty of examples of getting it wrong (see the graph on the right above).
At this stage in the US market, the iPhone has more than 80 million (sampled) users. Android has about 100 million. It's still a growing market so apart from BlackBerry, ((Three million BlackBerry users in the US remain.)) the churn between the smartphone platforms is still minimal. The two main platforms are still harvesting non-consumers.
This will change of course. And when it does, the competition will shift from winning against non-consumption to winning against other-consumption or over-consumption. That post-saturation competition will be decided by brand loyalty as much as anything else.
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Update: comScore just published US Smartphone penetration by Age which offers some clues where smartphone hiring is still going on. (Note: <13 ages are not shown).
