retrogusto

Of course, it’s also possible that the battery capacity will be lower than average but battery life will be higher, since battery life depends on much more than just the battery capacity.

Another thing that might help to make the upcoming numbers look good is the weakening dollar. All of the uncertainty relating to tariffs, to US disinterest in global leadership (severe cuts to aid, State Dept., US embassies, Radio Free Europe) and disinterest in traditional alliances (e.g. NATO, Ukraine vs. Russia) has led to a weaker dollar, which will make global sales numbers look better when converted to dollars. Often in recent years Luca Maestri spoke of “FX headwinds” that made things look worse, but things are swinging in the other direction now. Unfortunately, the same uncertainty will probably make it difficult for Apple to be very optimistic with any forecasts, so the benefit of a weaker dollar will likely be overshadowed by that. 

AppleZulu said:

retrogusto said:

DAalseth said:

I don’t know what MS is smoking but those numbers make absolutely no sense to me. I’ve seen a lot of surveys and analyst’s reports in the last few months and consistently Foldable’s have been a tiny niche product, and AI is WAY down the list of important items. 

The fact that they grouped foldables together with thinner phones could be muddying the waters. I have no interest in foldables, but the way the phones keep getting thicker and heavier is probably the biggest reason why I’ve been hesitant to buy a new phone in recent years—none of the new features matter to me as much as the compactness, so for my purposes the phones get a little worse with each new model, or at best a different set of compromises.

The responses for Apple Intelligence are more surprising to me, but I’m glad some users are finding value there. 

Without seeing the actual Morgan Stanley report, it's hard to know for sure what any of this actually means.

Most importantly,  the text of the article here does not support the headline at all.  It's pretty unjustified to derive the headline "Tariffs not stopping Americans from wanting new iPhones with Apple Intelligence" from a survey that was likely conducted before the announcement of tariffs on China and that also doesn't appear to mention tariffs in the actual survey results. There is certainly no indication in the article here that Morgan Stanley's survey or investor note referenced tariffs. Also, the article does mention that the previous Morgan Stanley survey on this subject was over six months ago in September. At that interval it seems highly doubtful much or any of the data for the current survey was collected after Trump's "Liberation Day" announcement less than three weeks ago. Put all that together, and there's nothing at all to suggest that survey respondents were even thinking about tariffs when they answered some questions about iPhones. 

True. The average consumer is only going to care about tariffs to the degree that they impact prices, and even now I imagine most consumers are assuming that new iPhones will cost roughly the same as current models. A sustained trade war would be a disaster for the US economy (among others), and September is still several months away, so it’s not such an unreasonable expectation. The headline is also kind of questionable in that the literal meaning is too obvious to constitute news—tariffs don’t stop people from wanting anything, but they might stop people from buying things, which is a critical distinction.

DAalseth said:

I don’t know what MS is smoking but those numbers make absolutely no sense to me. I’ve seen a lot of surveys and analyst’s reports in the last few months and consistently Foldable’s have been a tiny niche product, and AI is WAY down the list of important items. 

The fact that they grouped foldables together with thinner phones could be muddying the waters. I have no interest in foldables, but the way the phones keep getting thicker and heavier is probably the biggest reason why I’ve been hesitant to buy a new phone in recent years—none of the new features matter to me as much as the compactness, so for my purposes the phones get a little worse with each new model, or at best a different set of compromises.

I don’t see any way that the tariffs could remain in place for anything other than a very short period without leading to a financial situation that would destroy the Republican Party for years to come. People were furious about inflation under Biden, despite the fact that it was a worldwide crisis essentially resulting from Covid, and the US did relatively well compared to much of the world, only 1% worse than the inflation during Reagan’s first term. If left in place, the tariffs would cause very sharp increases in all kinds of things, and it would be hard to blame it on anything other than the tariffs. You also can’t really tell people that their bank statements or their supermarket receipts are fake news, and very little would be untouched by the proposed tariffs. Trump may be in office for a while, but midterm elections are next year. Trump won by a tiny margin, and the Senate and House are not controlled by large margins either, so the current administration can’t really risk angering a lot of voters without a bloodbath in next year’s elections. The plan is probably to hope for lots of quick concessions from other countries before things get too bad here, but anyone with a brain knows that he doesn’t really want to blow up the US economy just for leverage, so it wouldn’t be surprising if annoyed leaders around the world decide to call his bluff.