Will Tim Cook next week have to introduce a driverless Mac Car that runs on water and, for an additional $49, take us to Mars in order to keep this stock moving higher?
Is there any way that what is announced next week at Apple's (AAPL) annual spring product gala can equal the anticipation, which has driven the stock $16 since the beginning of March when people started buzzing about the event? Never mind the the 19% gain the stock has experienced this year.
You are going to want to understand this answer, because it's about the new Apple, the one that doesn't grade itself by handset sales. This is the Apple that, at last, ignores what Wall Street tech analysts want and talks about how customer satisfaction, ubiquity and indispensability will create greater sales over time.
In that vernacular, next week will exceed the expectations of those who are trying to figure out why they should own this amazing consumer product store while disappointing those who want the water-powered car, inspired by a white board design from the late Steve Jobs that simply can't be produced.
Right now, as we get hints dribbled out, it looks like that there will be some sort of video package with original content as well as a new set of $159 air pods with a charge case for $40 more, 30% lower latency and a "Hey Siri" feature that makes that amazing talk system come alive hands free.
To the negativists, or perhaps nihilists, these are incremental -- as in "sell the stock on the news."
But to the user, Apple may be further cementing an ecosystem we can't live without, an ecosystem with sales driven as much by ubiquitous wearables as handsets -- hence why the number of handsets sold may not be as important as the desire to go with a part of Apple that can then drive subscription services over time.
Apple's become like the old American Express (AXP) card ad: "Don't leave home without it." The entire ecosystem that plugs into your entertainment world, your communications world, your auto world, your financial world, your audio world, your social world, your visual world and your health world has become indispensable, especially versus the other guy, whoever that might be.
I keep hearing that everything that Tim Cook's regime has come up with is pedestrian.
That drives me crazy, because I wear more pedestrian Apple accessories than anything else in my life. Sadly, I hate to tell you, but life can be pedestrian. Apple makes the pedestrian easier, more fun and simple -- and perhaps entertaining, if there's enough intellectual property of some kind we can subscribe to. I wish other companies had anything indispensably pedestrian to offer. I might be interested in their stocks, too.
So I expect the sell-the-news nattering nabobs of negativity to be out in full force on Tuesday, that is if they can wait until Tuesday. They will be listening on their Airpods, until they can get their hands on the new ones, noting new calls on their watch while they scribble responses and calling in with Facetime or taking pictures of the event on their iPhone Ten, all the while denigrating the company and its short-sighted utilitarian vision.
I say that what matters is that the more ingrained Apple is in your life, the more likely that you will find yourself paying double what you do now for services that you can't live without.
So Tim, if you don't put a man on mars with a car driven by ocean water -- not just plain precious water, but ocean water -- there will be analysts going buy to hold. But there will be investors who say "there's nothing else in this world I can't live without, so I'll buy the stock or let it ride."
Ubiquity and indispensability. That's what it's about. Let Elon Musk take us to Mars in a flying Tesla (TSLA) , tweeting all the way.
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