On AAPL

AAPL is suffering under the same malaise as HP and Dell. Notebook sales are down, and repairs are up. A lot. People are fixing rather than discarding and buying new. AAPL’s problem is the use of Gorilla glass and the requirement for a special clean room to do the repairs, so only their manufacturer can do it. If they qualify other sources, you’ll see the repair time go down dramatically and yet even more reduction in NB sales.

AAPL needs to find more revenues with good margins this quarter. Even the forecast for phones won't keep their revenues and margins growing, they need margins from Notebooks or other revenue sources.

A multi-billion dollar organization that has a hands-on design and marketing capability and forced focus from the CEO is extremely unusual. This fundamental is probably the main reason for AAPL’s success, and I’m thinking that the consensus approach between marketing, sales, design, product and project management will cause the demise of this success. Steve Jobs, being the tyrant, where it was his way or the highway, kept focus and complete faithfulness of his subordinates. This is AAPLs success. Now the question is posed: how far out of the grave can Steve Jobs’ single-mindedness and control reach?

Could Steve forsee the market trend changes? I don’t think so, because AAPL missed earnings estimates (even though the earnings were stellar), and this miss happened too soon after Steve’s death for any changes to be brought about by his successor(s). I’m thinking Steve did not have a plan to overcome shrinking notebook sales.

So what’s next for AAPL?

Maybe we could use the comments section for ideas, and perhaps if one is good, somebody could forward it to them.

Here’s my $.02.

I used to tell my management that if we wanted to show growth, all we had to do is take a tiny piece of the big guy’s market through either targeted design or marketing initiatives. Even though AAPL’s visibility is high, they really have a very small piece of the smartphone market, which is owned by RIMM and various Android providers. Can they kill RIMM by providing multiple database connectivity and encrypted email (a targeted design)? And perhaps other RIMM features, to replace them in the market.

You know the old saying, “Kick ‘em when they’re up, kick ‘em when they’re down”..

Perhaps the Sprint penetration is the first of several targeted marketing initiatives to come to capitalize in this area.