Apple's Tim Cook lays it out, Apple does not make crappy products

Why Tim Cook, Apple's CEO used this as a platform is perhaps beyond me, but I guess this one came with a little umpfff. The event was the Goldman Sachs technology conference, the place was San Francisco. Initially the stock was up, but it ended down around two and a half percent. In part due to the fact that Cook said that too many impatient investors spoil the broth the companies cash was not burning a hole in their pocket. And that the remarks and lawsuit from David Einhorn were a silly sideshow. And not a well thought out lawsuit following a detailed slideshow. I can understand the want and desire of David Einhorn to spruce up his returns, but I am guessing that if he is not patient enough, then find another investment with more juice. Or buy more shares and ruffle some feathers on the board. I guess his fund does not have the money to do that. BlackRock, the worlds biggest asset manager has been buying Apple shares like crazy, they own 5.31 percent, or 49.8 million shares. What do they think?


Back to the Tim Cook and Apple news, the main reason for actually talking there was possibly to get the number out there that Apple developers have generated around 8 billion Dollars worth of app sales. Apple keeps 30 percent of that. It was just showing you what we got, and what you have and how much money you can make on this platform. Howard Lindzon suggested that Goldman employees use Blackberries at work and iPhones and iPads at home, so this was barking up the wrong tree.


There is luckily for us a transcript of the speech: This is Tim Cook at the 2013 Goldman Sachs conference. Some of the important pieces for me were around innovation: "The innovation is so deeply embedded in Apple's culture: the boldness, the ambition, the belief that there aren't limits, the desire among our people to not just make good products but make the very best products in the world, it's as strong as ever, it's deeply embedded, it's in the values, it's in the DNA of the company." Like we often used to say, we are sure that the next Steve Jobs might want to associate him or herself with the business.

But the stuff that I really like is the following: "When I sort of zoom out and look at the smartphone market in particular, what I see is a market that last year was around 700 million [units], plus or minus. It's projected to double in the next four years to 1.4 billion—this is a huge market. I believe that more on a longer-term basis, all phones will be smartphones, and there's a lot more people in the world than 1.4 billion, and people love to upgrade their phones fairly regularly." This is true. People love their smartphones more than their families, in the case of Piers Morgan. So I have heard, or read through an article by his second wife. Perhaps soon to be ex if he keeps that up. Well. Not too sure what to make of all of this other than Tim Cook has been at this conference for a while. And he makes good points. Rather than the TV or watch rumours, I would prefer to see an augmented reality glasses rumour. Perhaps they will wait for Google to release them and then "Apple" them. We continue to hold and recommend the stock.