Analyst discusses Apple's revenue strategies and forecasts (Part 4)

To move the non pro phones out of the cycle, out of the fourth quarter holiday cycle, move it to the following year into the spring. Now the dynamics at play there were twofold. One, Samsung had split their lineup. So they have two major launches. They've got one in the spring and one in the fall. Fall they split the regular phones apart from the foldables. The other factor here is Apple wanting to spread revenue across, you know, the four quarters versus tucking everything into the holiday period as they have traditionally done. So as much as Apple fans want to say that this is a soundly run business, that things don't just happen as a coincidence like their success in terms of the market response to overspending in AI and Apple not spending much in AI, this is something else they fell backwards into. Right. The memory shortage wasn't something they knew when they made the decision to postpone the lower margin devices to the following year. The other thing I'll say is that the supply chain shortages that they're having for the iPhone duo also presents an opportunity for them to smooth revenue out throughout the year. So you're likely to see a pretty big Q1 the holiday period and we'll get into their forecast there, but also big Q2, Q3, Q4 because the iPhone Duo is going to be this $2,000 to $3,000 device that's going to be a huge revenue generator that's going to be in hot demand because of supply chain challenges and probably for the next six to nine months up until, you know, the second generation iPhone duo is ready probably at the end of 2027. So this is a big win for Apple in terms of smoothing revenue out throughout the year. Everything was all sunshine and rainbows until we got the forecast. You could watch the stock ticker begin collapsing when they got into the guidance. Now the guidance was, was pretty good. So they grew 12% in the fourth quarter. But then you look at the holiday quarter, they're going to grow between 7 and 10%. So it's a deceleration sequentially. Right. And they're trying to frame it on a year over year basis as okay, last year they grew 17% in the holiday quarter, year over year because the iPhone 17 Pro. And then they say on top of that we're going to grow another 7 to 10% in the holiday quarter for, for, you know, going into 2027. That's a deceleration. You can't make those things additive just because it makes the.