Another ‘yawn’ story over the festive season was Apple’s deal with China Mobile making available its iPhones to its 760m subscribers in China. Great deal but this has been on the cards for many months. Still it was enough to induce an end year rally in Apple shares. After hitting $706 in Sept 12, they slumped to $390 in mid 2013 before ending the year at $561 – up 5.4% on 2013.
I was interested to read in several journals that ‘the Kindle Fire is the fruitcake of tablets’.
Apparently it’s the kind of thing you buy for others as a gift but wouldn’t dream of using yourself – preferring an iPad instead (Note – I like fruitcake!) Although John Lewis reported a sale of an iPad ‘every ten seconds’ in the run up to Christmas, activations on Christmas Day were down on previous years. One explanation (and certainly true in the Holway household) is that iPad users pass their old iPads down to their kids/grandkids when they upgrade. We have as many iPad generations in use over Xmas as there are real ‘generations’.
But any visit to an Apple Store in the run up to Christmas would have reassured any Apple investor on how the current range is selling. Then Tim Cook issued an end of year memo to staff saying "We have a lot to look forward to in 2014, including some big plans that we think customers are going to love’. The pundits then guessed at all kinds of new Apple goodies from the iWatch and iTV to a 13inch iPad. We’ll all have to ‘wait and see’.