Apple

We completed our annual Apple Pay review and found year over year growth has been impressive with active users more than doubling (source: Apple), transactions more than tripling (source: Apple) and online merchant adoption increasing by ~50% (source: Loup Ventures).…

We recently surveyed 520 US consumers about smart speakers and found that 89% of respondents were satisfied with them. A closer look at the results reveals the reason for this high satisfaction; early use cases are simple (Music, weather, general…

Conclusion Yesterday, we put HomePod through the smart speaker gauntlet which included 782 queries along with comprehensive tests of sound quality and ease of use. Our methodology was comprised of 3 HomePods being tested throughout the day by the Loup…

Special thanks to Austin Bohlig for his work on this note.  Two of Apple’s key iPhone X component suppliers, Lumentum (LITE) and AMS AG (AMS), reported strong Dec-17 quarter results and more importantly provided upbeat 2018 outlooks. Both company’s supply key…

Growing Device Base & Increasing Revenue Per Device. We attribute the after-market reversal in shares of AAPL to investors getting a handle during the call on Apple’s long-term opportunity. Tim Cook went out of his way to reinforce Apple’s massive and…

Despite growing investor concern, we remain comfortable that iPhone X had a favorable start in Dec-17 and the momentum will continue into Mar-18. We believe iPhone X reached the important global supply-demand equilibrium in mid-January, suggesting a small amount of…

Don’t expect any big M&A. Everyone is asking who Apple will acquire. The answer is: nobody. At least nobody big ($5B+). Apple announced they’re paying $38B in repatriation taxes, which implies they’re bringing $215B back to the U.S. If there…

Semester exam results are in. In our latest 800 question test of AI assistant Siri, she was able to understand 99% of queries and correctly answer 75% of them, earning a C grade. In April of 2017, Siri earned a D+ on…

Conclusion. In the first week of January, average iPhone X supply inched up to 97% after a month of rapidly increasing availability for U.S. Apple in-store and online lead times in 8 countries improved from an average of 4 days to…

App Store revenue grew about 30% in 2017. Apple announced App Store revenue reached $300 million on New Year’s Day 2018, a single day record. They also reported for the period of Christmas Eve to New Year’s Eve, App Store…

Conclusion. In the final week of December, average iPhone X supply dramatically increased for the fourth consecutive week to 96% for U.S. Apple in-store and online lead times in 8 countries remained essentially unchanged at 3 days as of Jan 1st.…

Loup Ventures’ predictions of 2018: AI theme continues and artificial general intelligence takes small step forward through Google’s “Deepmind” initiative. VR gets untethered but it still takes another year to take off. Google Home continues to gain market share in smart…