Speaker 1: Bloomberg Audio Studios, podcasts, radio news.
Speaker 2: So you probably know that Apple unveiled its latest iPhone
Speaker 2: this week.
Speaker 3: iPhone sixteen raises the bar for what an iPhone can do.
Speaker 2: The new model, the iPhone sixteen, came with you guessed it,
Speaker 2: a new camera.
Speaker 4: iPhone sixteen features so many exciting camera upgrades, camera control,
Speaker 4: fortyh megapixel fusion camera, the equivalent of four lenses including
Speaker 4: Macro Space, Shiel Capture, and more.
Speaker 2: Kind of sounds a lot like the last iPhone launch.
Speaker 2: iPhone fifteen Pro has our best camera system yet users
Speaker 2: will get even better photos and videos. And the one before.
Speaker 3: That, iPhone fourteen and iPhone fourteen plus are full of innovations,
Speaker 3: including a fantastic new camera system.
Speaker 2: And the one before that.
Speaker 3: IPhone thirteen Pro with our biggest cameras some advancement.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you get the idea. So why is it always
Speaker 2: the camera? Well, my colleague Bloomberg Tech reporter Austin Carr says,
Speaker 2: there's something else going on here.
Speaker 1: Here's a very straightforward example to demonstrate how there's this
Speaker 1: beautiful interplay that Apple is discovered between hardware sales, which
Speaker 1: are profitable on their own and digital subscriptions. So each
Speaker 1: iPhone comes out with, like you mentioned, a bigger camera,
Speaker 1: a better camera. So every time you take a photo,
Speaker 1: that photo is bigger and bigger. It's larger in size
Speaker 1: in terms of the megabytes that each photo or gigabytes
Speaker 1: that a video might take up. Now, the amount of
Speaker 1: storage you have on your iPhone or in iCloud has
Speaker 1: a limit, so the larger photos get, the more you
Speaker 1: might have to pay when your phone runs out of memory.
Speaker 1: So that's just a great example of the people who
Speaker 1: pay for iCloud. It's often because you keep getting that
Speaker 1: pop up saying, hey, you're out of space, would you
Speaker 1: like to pay for I Cloud? And so that's driving
Speaker 1: people to pay ten twenty eight dollars a month to
Speaker 1: have storage in the cloud.
Speaker 2: Ten twenty however, many bucks a month that stacks up
Speaker 2: pretty fast. Apple has gotten really good at turning hardware iPhones,
Speaker 2: watches into ongoing revenue, so good that Austin says the
Speaker 2: company is now at a turning point.
Speaker 1: It's just a really fascinating time to review how Apple
Speaker 1: has changed in the last forty years, going from what
Speaker 1: was sort of an underdog upstart to now increasingly being
Speaker 1: seen as sort of this overlord of the technology landscape.
Speaker 2: Today on the show, how Apple went from underdog to overlord,
Speaker 2: It's strategy to stay that way and what that means
Speaker 2: for all of us. I'm Janet Paskin, and this is
Speaker 2: the big take from Bloomberg News. It's hard to remember now,
Speaker 2: but when Apple was first getting started, its products were
Speaker 2: way outside the industry mainstream. They were expensive, sometimes slow.
Speaker 2: There was that goofy orange laptop. Even the iPod came
Speaker 2: out way after other MP three players were on the market.
Speaker 2: And yet today Apple is worth more than three trillion dollars.
Speaker 2: I asked Bloomberg's Austin Carr. What happened helped me understand
Speaker 2: just how big Apple is. So for starters, it's the
Speaker 2: world's most valuable company. But what does that mean?
Speaker 1: You know, this is a massive company whose market shared
Speaker 1: is really as high as it is in devices in
Speaker 1: mobile computing. It really under sells how much of the
Speaker 1: world and our day to day lives their products touch
Speaker 1: and really have massive control on. They sell hundreds of
Speaker 1: ely I think it's two hundred three hund million or
Speaker 1: so iPhones per year. On top of that, they sell
Speaker 1: tons and tons of MacBooks, of AirPods, of Apple watches,
Speaker 1: you know, the iPads, MacBook pros imax. I mean, there
Speaker 1: was just a slate of hardware that drives their profits.
Speaker 1: It is just absolutely insane the scale and production that
Speaker 1: they sort of have to churn out every year.
Speaker 2: If you count up all the iPhones, iPads, Apple watches,
Speaker 2: and computers, there are more than two billion active Apple
Speaker 2: devices in the world. But it's not just selling the
Speaker 2: hardware that's made Apple rich. The companies figured out how
Speaker 2: to keep making money even after you make that initial purchase.
Speaker 2: Like Austin mentioned earlier, you get a new iPhone, and
Speaker 2: then maybe you add iCloud storage and subscribe to Apple TV.
Speaker 2: Plus this is all revenue tied to what the company
Speaker 2: calls digital services. Here's one astonishing statistic.
Speaker 1: Last quarter, Apple sales from digital services alone reached twenty
Speaker 1: four point two billion dollars, which is more than the
Speaker 1: combined revenue of Adobe, Airbnb, Netflix, Palenteer, Spotify, Zoom, and
Speaker 1: Elon Musk's X during that same period. I mean, that's
Speaker 1: just wild because we think about Apple as a hardware company,
Speaker 1: but they're making massive revenues in the digital space as well.
Speaker 1: So these are ways that Apple is sort of building
Speaker 1: on their hardware ecosystem in a way that drives tons
Speaker 1: more revenue and also diversifies so they're not wholly dependent
Speaker 1: on iPhone sales.
Speaker 2: Every two years, as Apple's gotten bigger, it's also gotten
Speaker 2: more confident about its place in the ecosystem and everyone
Speaker 2: else's Apple is in charge. Take the app store.
Speaker 1: It has become an absolute blockbuster for the company, in
Speaker 1: part because they charge big fees for accessing and selling
Speaker 1: things through that Apple ecosystem.
Speaker 2: An almost every transaction that takes place through the app store,
Speaker 2: buying an app, signing up for Netflix, or even buying
Speaker 2: something in an app, Apple takes thirty percent.
Speaker 1: And so that's become a massive, massive generator of revenues
Speaker 1: for Apple, just because the scale of the app store,
Speaker 1: there's so many apps within it, all over the world,
Speaker 1: and they're all every single day having a new update
Speaker 1: or something to sell a digital good within their apps,
Speaker 1: and that again is something that Apple always takes a
Speaker 1: cut on if you're of a certain scale.
Speaker 2: That hasn't made the company a ton of friends, and
Speaker 2: it certainly made them a few enemies, particularly when it
Speaker 2: comes to developers. The key group that made the App
Speaker 2: Store a success in the first place.
Speaker 1: As they've taken on more of these developers that they've
Speaker 1: imposed more rules about what can be released into the
Speaker 1: Apple ecosystem, as they continue to charge fees that Apple
Speaker 1: developers really are against. I think the question is how
Speaker 1: long they can keep that developer community interested in delivering
Speaker 1: the latest and greatest to Apple's products.
Speaker 2: Another question whether Apple's tactics are even legal coming up
Speaker 2: after the break, why regulators are circling the company, and
Speaker 2: why this year is a turning point for Apple. The
Speaker 2: flood of money coming from digital services and the app
Speaker 2: Store has made Apple and its shareholders really rich, but
Speaker 2: Bloomberg Tech reporter Austin Carr says it's also fundamentally changed
Speaker 2: what the company does. It doesn't need to wow us
Speaker 2: with game changing devices in quite the same way. It
Speaker 2: just has to play defense.
Speaker 1: A lot of you know, former executives or even current
Speaker 1: employees that feel like, you know what, maybe they've gone
Speaker 1: too far with their rules regulations about the app store,
Speaker 1: And the question is just are those walls that they
Speaker 1: put around their garden a little bit too high? Maybe
Speaker 1: they have too much barbed wire.
Speaker 2: The US Justice Department certainly thinks.
Speaker 4: So.
Speaker 2: In March, the Department, along with sixteen states, sued Apple,
Speaker 2: accusing it of violating anti trust laws.
Speaker 1: It's a very long initial complaint, but it's ultimately about
Speaker 1: how Apple sort of prioritizes its own ecosystem to the
Speaker 1: detriment of others.
Speaker 2: Austin says. The complaint has a laundry list of ways
Speaker 2: the Justice Department sees Apple suppressing competition and limiting customers' choices.
Speaker 2: The complaint alleges Apple blocks rivals from using hardware and
Speaker 2: software features on iPhones and MacBooks or here's another example,
Speaker 2: car play.
Speaker 1: They talked about how because Apple controls so much of
Speaker 1: the software hubbed within the car, that that's becoming an
Speaker 1: anti competitive practice, to the point that some carmakers have
Speaker 1: canceled certain of software, Like I think there was one
Speaker 1: sided example of an automaker that was trying to develop
Speaker 1: a digital key to turn on your car through the iPhone,
Speaker 1: but because of Apple's rules, they ended up having to
Speaker 1: cancel it.
Speaker 2: The DOJ also alleges Apple uses the app store to
Speaker 2: thwart innovations that would have made it easier for consumers
Speaker 2: to switch phones that it has refused to support. Other
Speaker 2: messaging apps, that it has limited third party digital wallets
Speaker 2: and non Apple smart watches, and blocked mobile cloud streaming services.
Speaker 2: Apple says the lawsuit is wrong on the facts and
Speaker 2: the law. If Apple is right and the DOJ's suit fails,
Speaker 2: well Apple doesn't have to do anything differently. But what
Speaker 2: if the government wins, Austin says, to understand what could change,
Speaker 2: look at Europe.
Speaker 1: It's a really fascinating case study right now because of
Speaker 1: the different regulations in Europe. They're forcing Apple to allow
Speaker 1: alternative software marketplaces.
Speaker 2: In other words, not just one single app store.
Speaker 1: Indeed, there's already app stores that have launched, one called
Speaker 1: the Alt Store that has a different set of apps.
Speaker 1: It's a bit complicated to install. But Apple is forced
Speaker 1: to sort of open up its walled garden, create a
Speaker 1: few gates and different bridges to experience a different type
Speaker 1: of ecosystem within Apple products.
Speaker 2: And it's not just opening up the app store. Soon
Speaker 2: in Europe you could delete Safari or even I Message.
Speaker 1: So it's actually a really interesting experiment right now. If
Speaker 1: you go to Europe, people would argue that that's actually
Speaker 1: a more creative, interesting experience because there's more competition on
Speaker 1: Europe based on these regulations, whereas you cannot get the
Speaker 1: same type of experience in the US right now.
Speaker 2: On top of regulation, AI is also about to change
Speaker 2: the playing field for Apple. At the same event this
Speaker 2: week where it rolled out the new iPhone, Apple also
Speaker 2: showcased its new artificial intelligence platform.
Speaker 1: Apple Intelligence is the personal intelligence system at the heart
Speaker 1: of the iPhone sexteen lineup. The sort of big reveal
Speaker 1: is that Apple is trying to show AI as a
Speaker 1: hardware feature. Apple Intelligence draws on the immense power of
Speaker 1: our silicon to run multiple generative models on the iPhone
Speaker 1: in your pocket.
Speaker 2: AI as a hardware feature running models on the iPhone
Speaker 2: in your pocket. What that means is we usually think
Speaker 2: of AI like chat GPT or Google's Gemini AI like software,
Speaker 2: an app or a program that needs the Internet to run.
Speaker 2: Apple wants to change that by including a chip that
Speaker 2: could process some of this AI locally without an Internet connection.
Speaker 1: And so the big question is how well will those
Speaker 1: features appeal to consumers to make them want to spend
Speaker 1: another thousand dollars on upgrading a new iPhone or is
Speaker 1: it just sort of an arbitrary way of Apple saying,
Speaker 1: you know what in order to access the service, you're
Speaker 1: going to have to pay us for our hardware, even
Speaker 1: though we could deliver to you from the cloud.
Speaker 2: And the other thing about this new AI feature is
Speaker 2: it's kind of late. Apple's been late before, but this
Speaker 2: isn't the iPod.
Speaker 1: It's sort of an incremental, safe update. And indeed, for
Speaker 1: things that this AI cannot answer, they have this Chatchchept partnership,
Speaker 1: which we'll just say, let's say you ask it a question,
Speaker 1: it will just say, oh, we don't know how to
Speaker 1: answer that. Would you like to ask chat gept? And
Speaker 1: I think that just speaks volumes that Apple was not
Speaker 1: only late to this type of innovation, but they're rolling
Speaker 1: out a much more safe, incremental approach to it that's
Speaker 1: relying on an outside partner to handle the more complicated stuff.
Speaker 2: All of this is why Austin thinks Apple CEO Tim
Speaker 2: Cook has radically transformed the company.
Speaker 1: In twenty twenty five. I think, you know, Apple's in
Speaker 1: a pretty safe dominant position right now, but there's no
Speaker 1: doubt that that sort of relationship and brand sort of
Speaker 1: reputation which is so important to Apple has fundamentally altered
Speaker 1: in the last year or two. And I think that's
Speaker 1: what the story is all about.
Speaker 2: This is The Big Take from Bloomberg News. I'm Janet
Speaker 2: Paskin in for Sarah Holder. This episode was produced by
Speaker 2: David Fox. It was fact checked by Adriana Tapia. It
Speaker 2: was mixed by Rishi bijacob Our senior producers are Naomi
Speaker 2: Shaven and Kim Gettleson, who also edited this episode along
Speaker 2: with Jeff Muscus. Our senior editor is Elizabeth Ponto. Nicole
Speaker 2: Beemsterboer is our executive producer. Sage Bauman is Bloomberg's head
Speaker 2: of podcasts. If you liked this episode, make sure to
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Speaker 2: It helps people find the show. Thanks so much for listening.
Speaker 2: We'll be back tomorrow