Five Reasons Why Apple Ends Mac, iPhone and iPad Unit Sales Reports

Unlike all other major consumer electronics companies, Apple has detailed quarterly unit sales as well as revenue figures for its major product categories. This first helped investors understand the number of buyers attracted to Apple with its Macs, and then began to show them that the iPod, then the iPhone, were reaching a whole new level. public. Here is an overview of why this situation is currently changing in Apple's 2019 fiscal year.

The previous article in this series explained why Apple's change in accounting was not an attempt to conceal bad news. The company will still release revenue and Apple has just provided guidance for a record holiday season this quarter. Apple's chief financial officer, Luca Maestri, said at a teleconference on November 1, "We have the strongest lineup ever built for the holiday season, and we expect sales to be 89 billion and 93 billion, a new record. "

Despite this, analysts and experts have jumped on the change as a worrying development. This, in itself, allows us to understand why Apple wants to change the way it reports on its performance. But first, let's see how Apple's financial reporting has evolved as the company develops and why.

Exceptionally detailed historical reports on Apple's sales

Over the last twenty years, Apple's industry reporting of the above revenue as a percentage of total revenue and reporting per unit of parallel sales has changed several times. Until 2004, Apple was selling mostly Macs, so the company, then known as "Apple Computer, Inc." has published both detailed revenue and unit sales figures for the four segments of its core business: Power Macs (including servers) and PowerBooks for professionals, as well as iMacs and iBooks sold to home users.

The visualization above illustrates the segmented shares of Apple's total revenue for each year. The left edge of the chart is a breakdown of 1997 annual revenues, which totaled $ 7 billion, the year that Apple actually lost more than $ 1 billion. The straight edge represents 2016 revenues, which amounted to $ 215.6 billion, or 30 times more. That year, Apple realized a net profit of $ 45.7 billion.

So, while visualization gives the impression that Apple's Mac activities have been reduced to nothing, in fact, it has gone from almost all of Apple's revenue in 1997 to "only" 11% of its total revenue. in 2016 – despite revenue growth of Mac $ 22.8 billion.

Apple's quarterly reports once detailed Mac's revenues and unit sales by operating segment: Americas, Europe, Japan, Retail, and Other. Starting in 2001, the company also detailed the revenues and unit sales of its new iPod, allowing investors to better understand the performance of this product, regardless of its "Peripherals and Other Hardware".Analysts and journalists have clearly benefited from Apple's official reports on unit sales. However, they have also often focused on a series of erroneous conclusions that they have wrongly reached.

This level of detail changed in 2005, when Apple began declaring Mac sales solely in terms of desktop and laptop computers. The company also added unit sales of iPhone in 2007 and iPad in 2010.

In 2011, he stopped detailing Mac unit sales by operational segment (region), and in 2013 he no longer listed Mac categories and reported total sales as Mac units on a global scale.

Analysts and journalists have clearly benefited from Apple's official reports on unit sales. However, they also often dwell on a series of erroneous conclusions that they have incorrectly (and periodically maliciously) led to when they were trying to use the numbers of units. Apple against the company.

The misleading nature of unit sales reports: Macs in Japan

An example of an erroneous conclusion drawn from Apple's extremely detailed report on unit sales comes from Japan, which appears to have suffered a 3% drop in its net sales and 14% of its Mac units sales to during the 2004 financial year.

However, this alarming finding did not find that Apple had opened its first retail store outside the United States in Japan in 2003. All of Apple's sales through its own retail stores at retail were accounted for as units and revenues of Retail. Operational segment.

So while revenues and units in Japan appeared to be falling, the reality was that they were increasing. Apple had just sold a growing volume of Macs and iPods to the Japanese market via its own retail stores. Since its retail stores are from the United States, its highly transparent accounting practices created the illusion of a problem in Japan because people who did not understand the growing complexity of Apple's global operations wrong and simplistic assumptions while browsing Apple's financial reports. for some alarming details to make a sensation in a title.

Japan has long been an important market for Apple. Yet, since the misunderstanding of retail growth in this country in 2004, the country has been repeatedly described as a huge problem for Apple, especially with regard to iPhones.

Nobi Hayashi, a journalist in Japan, said that a local newspaper, Sankei Shimbun, created the idea that Apple and its operating partner, Softbank, wanted to sell a million units in its first year, but had only about 200,000 sales. In fact, neither company has ever announced such an objective and actual iPhone sales were about double those reported by the newspaper.

In 2008, Yukari Iwatani Kane of the Wall Street newspaper invented the idea that the iPhone had completely failed in Japan because of the high prices and consumer apathy (this sounds familiar to you?), entirely based on "missed expectations" invented by a research firm and rumors regarding this target of a million units.

In 2009 wired published "Why the Japanese hate the iPhone", an inflammatory article by blogger Brian X Chen. This completely false narration included false quotes attributed to a real person, including: "Wearing an iPhone in Japan could give you a nice look." wired later admitted that Chen 's article posed many problems after his "source" had stated that this quote was something he had never said and with which he did not say anything. was not at all in agreement.

Apple has never officially released the quarterly iPhone numbers for Japan. However, while various "journalists" have joined with "market players" to create false stories about the fact that Japan hated the iPhone, about the fact that it was not Innovative enough for the tech-savvy country and its price was far too high for anyone. To afford, Apple was detailing its revenue from Japan alongside Mac unit sales (as noted above in the 2010 Apple 10K).

Between 2008 and 2010, Apple's Mac units sales to Japan increased by 23%, but the total of its revenues grew by 130%. Clearly, iPhone was contributing massively to the huge growth in Japan. The public data provided by Apple did not stop a series of claptrap articles from regurgitating false media stories about Apple's deplorable situation in the land of the rising sun.

Today, Japan represents what appears to be the highest concentration of iOS uses (compared to Android) by its installed base of mobile users – with a peak this year at 75%, compared to 65% in the US United States, according to the same source. Device Atlas. In the last fiscal year, Apple's revenue from Japan grew by 23%, an unprecedented figure compared to other Apple regions.

That means its time for the the Wall Street newspaper to invent a new story about how Japan hates so much Apple's latest product that it must offer mobile operators an incentive discount ($ 100, or 13%) to boost sales of its iPhone XR – a thing so routine for others that it's not even new when they reduce their prices on the territory of companies at a loss or offer promotions "buy one, get one for free".

No amount of detailed unit reporting has been able to prevent these writers from inventing stories about how Japan hates Apple and about everything that makes it so important that its employees have spent 21, $ 7 billion in Apple products and services over the past year. To help visualize the importance of this number: it's about half of Facebook total global income last year.

The misleading nature of unit sales reports: the first iPods

When the numbers of iPod units began to explode in 2003, a series of analysts and experts decided that Apple should abandon the Mac because the company was recording a three-figure growth in its sales of music units, but no similar growth for Mac – total unit growth would have been only 9% in 2004.

In 2005, Rob Enderle, a prolific technology expert from the beginning of the millennium, imagined that Microsoft's new Xbox 360 "could even come to grips with Apple, forcing the company to leave the personal computer sector."

"I know a lot of people who are waiting for Apple to take the first option [“exit the computer business and concentrate on the more powerful accessories market”] and move away completely from the computer sector to better focus on the new, highly profitable multimedia product categories, "added Enderle. Most people who think this way are developers. "

This sale was silly, as the increase in iPod sales helped boost Apple's retail efforts, which then fueled the Mac's long-term growth and paved the way for the launch of an iPhone and an iPad.

Even in 2005, as Enderle fantasized about the end of the Mac, Apple's computer sales grew 38 percent to 4.5 million units a year. In 2010, Apple sold 13.6 million Macs a year. Eight years later, Apple now sells 18.2 million Macs a year, although it also created a brand new iPad-based computing platform that sold an additional 43.5 million units over the same period.

Sales of Apple, which account for 61.7 million iPads and Macs, have made it the largest computer manufacturer in the last four quarters, ahead of HP and Lenovo, which sold about 57 million computers in a shrinking market. And while the installed base of Enderle's beloved Xbox (the 360 ​​and the One) has hovered around 50 million units, the active installed base of Mac users has reached 100 million.

Yet fifteen years ago, with no long-term vision or clear understanding of Apple's future plans, a number of experts reiterated that Apple was no longer a computer company and so had to focus exclusively on iPod. no idea what Apple was doing internally nor a real understanding of what was happening in the industry. They only had the unit sales numbers of current iPods and Macs, which did not help them understand anything.

The misleading nature of unit sales reports: iPod late

While sales of smartphones that could play MP3 files began to increase, many analysts and bloggers had the impression that Apple's iPod sales would eventually collapse and that the brief period of success of Steve Jobs would end. What really happened is that when Apple introduced its new iPhone in 2007, the nature of iPods is largely converted into an IOS software feature.

Yet even before Apple announces the new iPhone, David Smith of The Guardian had written the premature eulogy of 2006 "Why the iPod is losing its coolness," claiming that "sales are dropping at an unprecedented rate." Industry experts are talking about a "backlash" and an iPod "fading before our eyes." Very disastrously, Apple's handheld device with white earbuds may have become too common to be cool. "

Although the annual number of physical iPod units sold by Apple has finally declined, this did not happen until 2009. Smith, along with the various experts who fed him at the microphone, foreshadowed a fate for Apple because its sales of iPod units were stable for two quarters after the 17 quarters of growth, were all obsessed with these unit sales without any understanding of what was going on inside Apple. All they've been able to see is a seasonal decline in iPods sold during the summer. So they wrote apocalyptic death scenarios.

In addition, as sales of iPod units declined, the base of iPod users buying iTunes downloads continued to grow dramatically, primarily because all iPhones were also "widescreen iPods", such as Steve Jobs explained during the debut of the new phone. Yet technical journalists and some analysts have continued to focus on the reported unit numbers for standalone iPods and arrived at some really stupid and myopic conclusions.

Rather than interested in the broader ecosystem of iTunes downloads and the dramatic increase in revenue generated by mobile devices by Apple, many experts have been obsessed with the obsession with iPod sales as a kind of "bad news" substantial that actually erased the real gains of Apple. In reality, Apple was Upgrade its iPod sells cheap MP3 devices to a more powerful iOS product, offering a higher price while leaving its users more satisfied, more loyal and more likely to come back in the future for more Apple branded hardware.

In 2008, Apple achieved a record sales figure of 54.8 million iPods, at an average selling price of $ 167. That year, 11.6 million iPhones were sold at a unit price of about $ 560 each. The following year, experts were obsessed with the 1% drop in iPod units sold, even as iPhone units grew by 78% and the revenue they generated grew even faster 93%.

In part, two quarters were related to the fact that IPhones were also iPods, an obvious fact that the easy analysis of the experts failed to grasp because they were looking for sensationalism rather than really understanding the trends that were occurring in Apple's business. The unit sales figures did not help them understand what was happening, even though Apple was spooning parallel unit prices.

Despite the contraction in unit sales, iPod still had a remarkable 72% share of the stand-alone music player market at the end of 2013, as analyzed by NPD research analyst Benjamin Arnold.

However, many analysts and journalists did not understand how Apple successfully orchestrated the transition from the iPod market to the iPhone because they were simply distracted by unit sales figures. It was as if an audience of judges laughed with contempt for the triathlete in the lead because he was no longer making any documented progress in swimming while in reality he was riding a motorcycle far ahead of all other competitors. .

Misleading Unit Sales Reports: iOS Devices

The cyclical nature of Apple's iPhone business initially resulted in a decline in the number of units in the spring quarter that followed its launch. This has been widely interpreted in the most cynical way among Apple critics, who insisted that quarterly fluctuations in iPhone unit shipments were a worrying sign that iPhones were losing their appeal and that buyers were abandoning Apple for alternatives.

The same bad analysis broke out regarding iPad unit sales after the peak of mini-fuel tablets in 2014. When Apple introduced new, larger iPhones, a significant segment of smaller iPad unit sales to from $ 399 has actually increased upwards in the form of big numbers of Apple's new iPhone 6 Plus at $ 750.

The total number of iOS devices skyrocketed, although Apple's detailed unit reports pointed out that iPad-branded mobile devices were "collapsing", at least among authors who did not understand very well what was happening in the sector.

Critics have continued to trap iPad sales for years. Some have essentially announced that the tablets were finished, even as Apple continued to ship the largest number of tablets – several million per quarter – and made almost all profits in the global tablet market. The iPad continues to remain roughly at par with Apple's Macs, generating revenues of about $ 18 billion to $ 20 billion a year. However, simple solutions based on unit sales figures have fueled misinformation and misleading media accounts.

The misleading nature of unit sales reports: Mac

This fifth example is a variant of nonsense from the early 2000s "Apple is now the iPod company". A decade later, Mac's unit sales of Apple were overshadowed by a new product: the iPad.

Near the top of iPad unit sales in 2015, Christopher Mims published his breathtaking essay for the the Wall Street newspaper According to him, Apple should "kill the Mac" and "focus on products that represent the future", in part because Macs generated less than 10% of Apple's total revenue and that "Apple n & rsquo; Does not need these revenues ".

That year, Apple sold 20.6 million Macs generating $ 25.5 billion in revenue and 54.9 million iPads generating $ 23.2 billion. During the same period, Microsoft's Surface division generated approximately $ 3.4 billion in revenue, but none of the big financial thinkers recommended Microsoft "give up" because mouse-based computers represented the past, that material experiences distracted his attention, or that Microsoft "did not need revenue" because Surface contributed very little to its total revenues – and represented only fraction of Apple's revenue.

Since then, many expert opinions recommend Apple to reduce its prices. Instead, Apple has actually made Mac its luxury computing tier, generating 18.2 million Macs during the 2018 fiscal year, while generating $ 25.5 billion in revenue. And although iPad sales have slowed for a number of reasons, their current figure of 43.5 million units per year, revenues still generated $ 18.8 billion this year.

If Apple had followed the advice offered by the the Wall Street newspaper in 2015, it would have given up sales of about 56 million Macs and a business turnover of $ 74.2 billion, just to "focus" on iOS mobile devices targeting two markets in worldwide decrease: smartphones and tablets. To visualize this number, it is almost 15 times the expenses of Rupert Murdoch to acquire the the Wall Street newspaper.

When the the Wall Street newspaper claims to be able to interpret the rumors about Apple's global supply chain today, remember the depth of its incredibly ignorant advice that it offered as a serious thought just three years ago, and how has been wrong since serving buckets of false comment under the guise of being a credible financial newspaper.

Hyper-scrutiny of Apple units, none for rivals

Write for the the Wall Street newspaper Earlier this month, Tripp Mickle told Apple he would stop reporting unit sales for iPhone, iPad and Mac by writing this: "When Steve Jobs did a trial on the Amazon.com Kindle. In 2009, he pointed to the retailer's decision not to report unit sales of its reading device as evidence of its absence.More than ten years later, Apple is following a similar path. "

A little logic escapes Mickle's cynicism: no columnist or expert has ever reviewed Amazon's Kindle sales, but Apple's unit sales have been sliced, diced and turned into piles of bad news over the past two decades. Instead, it has always been assumed that Kindle was kind of a reasonably successful project, despite the fact that Amazon never published the unit figures. or even income related to its e-reader activity.

And despite Amazon 's attempts to present the Kindle as "the iPod' s books, it 's never managed to get a success as brief as that of the iPod, but it' s n & # 's 39 has failed to turn into another type of success, such as the Apple iPhone and Apple's Surveillance Lines. Kindle e-readers have spawned the Fire Phone disaster and a range of Fire tablets that have not only ever officially reported revenue or revenue, but have only ever been offered at discounted prices. unbeatable.

In addition, the Amazon App Store has never turned into a major commercial activity comparable to the Apple App Store, world leader.

More recently, Alexa's Amazon products have been overwhelmed by the kind of fervent worship usually reserved for Google's hardware. Yet neither company has ever provided quarterly figures for units sold or revenues generated. And it's only in retrospect that we've discovered that it's been incredible failures that not only did not generate material revenues or sell significant quantities, but did not drive either. their limited users to the various advertising services of Amazon or Google. with any commercial significance.

This news came from L & # 39; information, a solid decade after allowing Amazon to simulate its success with Kindle devices, then Alexa, with almost zero control from the same people who hyperventilated about each unit figure released by Apple. Amazon was allowed to simulate its success with Kindle devices, then Alexa, with almost zero control from the same people who hyperventilated about each unit figure ever released by Apple.

In addition, Mickle's comment on the modification of Apple's unit reports also failed to understand that Apple would continue to report revenue from its business units of hardware and software. services, so that it will not conceal any sales collapse. It will simply be to give reporters less ammunition to use to shoot themselves in the foot while they are trying to take wild shots at Apple.

Nothing accounts for total disregard for accuracy in technology industry reports, as are expert opinions on historical iPad unit numbers. These have been used for years to claim that Apple's iPad business was on the verge of collapse even as it generated tens of billions of dollars in profits on the sale of millions of iPads to individuals and the business quarterly.

IDC recently admitted that the iPad was indeed the leader of global tablets "relentlessly" after eight years of denial that sought to present failures such as Tablet PCs and Windows Phone as long-term winners. Note that neither Microsoft nor its licensees have ever published quarterly figures regarding their sales of phones or tablets.

And at the same time, assumptions were made about the future of Google's tablet future despite the fact that Google had never managed to create a successful tablet business. While Google was abandoning tablets and beginning to throw Chromebooks on K12 education, the story has changed: how devastating it was for Apple, despite the fact that iPads are selling in important markets around the world in much larger quantities, while Chromebooks have never become popular in a real market. apart from the few million loss units provided at K12.

Like Amazon, Samsung has often been equated with Apple as a heavyweight tablet, although neither company has ever created a viable tablet business, even remotely comparable to Apple. And after 8 years of trying to penetrate the tablet market, Microsoft recently congratulated Microsoft for selling a few hundred thousand units in the US, making it one of the "top five" Suppliers in a market where four companies only tablets.While it's nice to have Apple report unit sales of its product categories, the reality is that these numbers have always been used against the company to promote pure lies and incompetent analysis.

While it's nice to have Apple announce unit sales of its product categories, the fact is that these numbers have always been used against the company to promote honest lies and incompetent analysis, while by offering Apple's competitors a valuable stream of free market data in the marketplace. the industry's best-performing hardware manufacturer, competing data is not reciprocal.

Apple stopped reporting units before

Just before the launch of Apple Watch, Apple announced that it would stop reporting iPod unit sales and not publish the unit number for Apple Watch. This generated conflicts between members of the media and various analysts, who were particularly worried about not having any way to measure the success of Apple Watch.

Many concluded that Apple did not have high hopes for its new laptop, nor did it have very good prospects for entering the smartwatch sector, which already had a set of established suppliers, including Samsung, Fitbit, Pebble and a Google's Android Wear series. partners, including at the time, Google's own subsidiary, responsible for the promotion of mobile androids. Bien entendu, aucun de ces fournisseurs n'a jamais publié de ventes trimestrielles unitaires de leurs smartwatches.

Les premières données suggéraient qu'Apple ne vendait pas assez de montres ou se faisait battre sur le marché par des appareils moins chers, fondés uniquement sur des estimations du nombre d'unités expédiées. Mais encore une fois, la réalité était qu’Apple avait créé un produit haut de gamme qui attirait effectivement un public enthousiaste. En seulement quelques années, Apple Watch avait détruit tout le potentiel apparent des montres intelligentes alternatives et avait même commencé à dévaster le marché plus vaste des montres de luxe.

Plutôt que de "cacher" ses ventes unitaires, Apple s'est concentré sur le détail des tendances des revenus liés à son groupe Other Hardware, et a régulièrement souligné en particulier la santé et la croissance de ses systèmes vestimentaires. Au-delà de Apple Watch, Apple n'a également jamais publié de chiffres trimestriels sur les AirPod. Cela n'a eu aucune incidence sur le succès retentissant des AirPods, mais a empêché leurs concurrents d'accéder à des données très précieuses sur les domaines dans lesquels Apple investissait son capital d'innovation.

Dans le même temps, le nombre de discussions sur la chute des iPod par les médias a largement diminué, car il n’existait plus de numéro d’unité officiel que les experts pourraient obséder et exploser par ignorance dans un faux problème. Comme je l'ai déjà indiqué, non seulement tous les appareils iOS sont-ils effectivement devenus des "iPods", à la fois comme utilitaire et comme base installée pour les ventes de téléchargements de média et maintenant pour les abonnements Apple Music, mais l'Apple Watch elle-même est essentiellement l'iPod moderne d'Apple, mis à niveau ses capacités et son style, et capable d’exiger un prix beaucoup plus élevé.

Apple ne cache évidemment pas ses ventes unitaires internes d'unités portables par honte, mais plutôt parce que ces données étaient à la fois inutiles à rendre publiques devant ses concurrents et parce que les chiffres des unités déclarantes seraient probablement interprétés avec le même type d'incompétence et cynisme malicieux au cours des deux dernières décennies en ce qui concerne le reporting des unités sur Mac, iPod, iPhone et iPad.

Apple explique pourquoi il ne communiquera plus les données de l'unité en 2019

Le premier trimestre fiscal 2019 d’Apple, qui a débuté le 1er octobre, marquera la première fois que la société ne fera pas état de ventes unitaires de Mac, iPod, iPhone et iPad, comme pour son autre matériel. En plus d'éviter de partager ces données avec leurs rivaux et de soustraire les ventes unitaires aux vues des critiques qui cherchent à les utiliser contre la société, les dirigeants d'Apple ont exposé d'autres raisons clés pour ne pas se concentrer sur les ventes unitaires.

Lors de sa dernière téléconférence avec les analystes, le directeur financier d’Apple, Luca Maestri, a déclaré que "le nombre d’unités vendues au cours d’une période de 90 jours n’est pas nécessairement représentatif de la force sous-jacente de nos activités".

En d'autres termes, plutôt que de "cacher le nombre d'unités vendues", le véritable objectif d'Apple est de éviter de cacher des informations significatives derrière un simple total d'unités vendues.

Maestri a clarifié cela séparément en disant "pour vous donner un exemple, les ventes unitaires d'iPhone en haut de gamme ont été très fortes au cours du trimestre de septembre, et c'est très important car nous attirons les clients vers les technologies les plus récentes et fonctionnalités et l'innovation que nous apportons dans la gamme, mais vous ne voyez pas nécessairement que dans le [iPhone units sold] numéro qui est rapporté. "

Plutôt que des ventes unitaires offrant un aperçu clair des activités d’Apple, elles détournent souvent des données plus importantes sur la nature des activités d’Apple. Historiquement, c'était le cas lorsque les ventes d'unités iPod ont considérablement dépassé celles des Mac. quand les iPod ont commencé à rétrécir; lorsque les iPhones ont plongé de façon saisonnière; lorsque les unités iPad sont converties en ventes iPhone; lorsque les ventes unitaires iPad ont éclipsé les Macs; et comme Apple a vendu des modèles plus avancés et haut de gamme plutôt que de simples volumes d'appareils de base ou moins chers.

Maestri a ajouté, "une unité de vente est moins pertinente pour nous aujourd'hui que par le passé, compte tenu de l'étendue de notre portefeuille et de la dispersion plus grande des prix de vente au sein d'une gamme de produits donnée".

Encore une fois, Maestri constate effectivement que les ventes unitaires ne sont pas toutes égales. La vente d'un iPhone ultra-premium vaut plus que les "deux unités" représentées par un iPhone bas de gamme et un iPad mini séparé. Définir son activité en termes de ventes unitaires occulte l’une des compétences clés les plus précieuses d’Apple: la capacité d’attirer et de fidéliser des acheteurs fidèles qui continuent d’acheter de nouveaux équipements Apple premium et utilisent des abonnements, des services, des accessoires, des logiciels et autres contenus, une échelle inégalée par des concurrents spécialisés dans les "ventes unitaires", avec pour objectif principal de gagner du volume "part de marché" plutôt que de créer une base de clientèle comme Apple.

Maestri a également déclaré séparément: "Le nombre d'unités vendues au cours d'un trimestre n'a pas nécessairement été représentatif de la force sous-jacente de nos activités. Si vous examinez notre chiffre d'affaires, si vous examinez le résultat des trois dernières années, Trois ans, si vous regardez le cours de nos actions ici au cours des trois dernières années, il n’ya aucune corrélation avec les parts vendues au cours d’une période donnée.

Il a également souligné que "nos principaux concurrents dans les smartphones, les tablettes et les ordinateurs ne fournissent pas non plus d'informations trimestrielles sur les ventes unitaires".

Au sujet des rapports sur les ventes unitaires, le chef de la direction d’Apple, Tim Cook, a également déclaré lors de la conférence téléphonique que "notre base installée grandit à deux chiffres, ce qui est probablement un indicateur beaucoup plus important pour nous du point de vue de l’écosystème et du client. loyauté, et cetera. Apple ne se concentre pas sur les volumes d'unités vendues, mais plutôt sur les volumes de clients "vendus" sur Apple

"La deuxième chose est un peu comme si vous allez au marché et que vous poussez votre panier jusqu'à la caissière et elle dit, ou il dit," combien d'unités vous avez là-bas? " Peu importe combien d'unités il y a là-bas en termes de valeur globale de ce qu'il y a dans le panier. "

Apple ne se concentre pas sur les volumes d'unités vendues, mais plutôt sur les volumes de clients "vendus" sur Apple. Un article de suivi détaillera les raisons pour lesquelles, et comment cela modifie les produits développés par Apple, comment il se différencie de ses concurrents, et pourquoi il est essentiel pour comprendre Apple et son avenir en tant que marque mondiale.