It seems the folks at The Motley Fool are making a run at Forbes’s record for the most ridiculous pieces about Apple per day. And in this contest, there are no winners.
Least of all the poor saps like the Macalope, who have to read this junk.
Writing for The Fool, Salvatore Mattera thinks that “If This Is the Next iPhone, Apple Shareholders Should be Worried.”
Well, of course they should. Because Apple shareholders should always be terrified of every rumor about the company, which all inevitably show how badly off the mark Apple is. So what’s the impending Apple fail this time?
The images show a phone identical in size and shape to the iPhone 5.
And what’s the problem with that? Too small of course!
And, despite whatever other features Apple plans to implement, such a phone could fall far short of sales expectations.
Could! It could fall short of sales expectations! One might wonder what sales expectations have been set for the as-yet-to-be-announced failPhone, but then one must not write for The Motley Fool.
In recent months, Apple has received a great deal of criticism for its decision to go with a 4-inch screen on the iPhone 5.
No, no, no, don’t ask “Which yahoos said that?” The point is there has been “a great deal of criticism”! And whenever there is “a great deal of criticism” you can tell that Apple’s blown it. Again. It’s a wonder the company’s stayed in business at all.
With the success of phones running Google’s Android operating system like the Galaxy SIII, Galaxy SIV, HTC One, Droid DNA, Nexus 4, and Xperia Z (among others), 4.5-5-inches has become the new standard in terms of flagship phone screen sizes.
The iPhone 5, as we all know, was an abject failure.
Say, how well is the Galaxy S4 doing, anyway?
Sales estimates for the S4 were slashed by as much as 30%, stirring investor concerns over Samsung’s mobile devices division – the company’s biggest profit generator.
Now, the S4 isn’t selling poorly, but it’s not selling as well as projected and, more importantly, none of these phones are selling as well as the iPhone 5. Pundits love to tell us how awesome it is when phones like the HTC One sell 5 million units in two months but they always somehow forget that the iPhone 5 sold that many in three days. And it’s always Apple that’s doooomed if the next iPhone isn’t a giant swath of a phone, a phone with its own ZIP code, a phone with its own heavy gravitational field.
A larger iPhone might have prompted a massive upgrade cycle, wherein existing iPhone users—jealous of their friends’ larger Androids—would have been eager to pay up.
Clearly there is nothing else that Apple can do with a phone that will make it a compelling purchase, so start flipping tables and burning things to the ground.
Both Morgan Stanley analyst Katy Huberty and Piper Jaffray analyst Gene Munster have said they believe mobile payments are in Apple’s future.
However, Google has been trying to pull off a similar feat for years.
Man, you can’t swing a generic, dead cat in this article without hitting an unsupported assumption about Apple’s inability to differentiate itself. A year doesn’t go by without pundits rushing to tell us how Apple’s missing out on the latest hotness, whether it’s netbooks or huge phones or net PCs or glasses.
Apple makes the best phone it knows how to make. If it thinks it can make a good one with a big screen, it probably will. Until then, be glad it isn’t feature-chasing like the rest of the pack.