The Curious Case of Apple, Twitter and Joseph Tieffenthaler

 
Apple has regained the title of the ‘World’s Most Valuable Listed Company’. The surge in the stock from $157.92 to $260.14 makes up of $ 398 Billion dollars in value, year to date in 2019 and that’s like the entire market cap of JP Morgan Chase & Co (408.93 Bn to be precise as of 7:28 PM, (GMT) November 10, 2019)Their services arm has brought $46 Billion of revenue YTD, and they do understand that services are less cyclical, pregnant with higher margins. Products can’t keep the match of services. The replacement cycle has slowed down because the prices of smartphones have exceeded. They are on par with some of the good laptops in the market. People are waiting for 5G update. And the reasons may just pile up. 

Their sincere attention for services domain may be exhibited by this timeline:
August 2019: Apple Card - The cashback (3-2-1) Model, wide acceptance of the payment mode across US Retail stores, and the embedded safety features have really been appreciated. The mode doesn’t share the actual credit card number to the retailer, but it shares a device number generated specific to your iPhone device.
September 2019: Arcade - Video game subscription service
November 2019: Apple TV Plus - It is an over-the-top ad-free subscription video-on-demand web television service. Their move of letting apple device owners (purchased after Sept 10: The very concise terms and condition may be read here: https://www.apple.com/promo/pdf/EN_US_ATV+_Promo_TandCs.pdf) use the service free for a year is definitely going to entice users to continue watching, and for some to eventually pay for a subscription, as new series are released. Though made on a whopping budget of $ 300 Million, Jennifer Aniston, Reese Witherspoon, and Steve Carell starrer ‘The Morning Show’ received mixed to negative reviews. 
Their recent iPhone launch, Tim Cook announcing that the iPhone 11 is the best-selling iPhone of all time, the launch of new air pods are a few of the other stuffs that we have not covered here. But there is a nice video which clearly explains as if what makes 
“Perfect, well-built Apple Product.” What’s meant by that? Now, this is something I would really encourage you to watch. This is a video review from Dave Lee. What is the core competency of wireless earphones? Sound & Noise cancellation. Sony wf 1000XM3 is better in both of terms to Apple Airpods Pro. But in the end, Dave calls the pro as a better product. This sums up the real tangible aspect of user experience, and I hope that the video serves the intention. Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PDdNGsqi1Ho





Twitter


After a series of tweets in which Jack Dorsey banned the political advertisement, it put Facebook on the back foot. The reason behind so was the stand that Facebook had earlier taken and expressed openly about Political Advertisements. Now it’s not the matter of revenue as Twitter draws only 0.8 percent from this particular type of advertisement while Facebook mentioned that $ 3 million dollars are their share in this. The timings are also crucial because Twitter expressed the same almost as close to Facebook, announcing their Quarter Earning reports. Twitter even took a dig at Mark in one of his following tweets banning political advertisement. He didn’t take name but made statements in the quote : 
For instance, it‘s not credible for us to say: “We’re working hard to stop people from gaming our systems to spread misleading info, but if someone pays us to target and force people to see their political ad…well...they can say whatever they want!