Monday, August 24, 2015

Apple's Tim Cook Disagrees With The Peak Smartphone Thesis (AAPL; REGFD)

Following up on last week's Peak Smartphone: "Smartphone Sales Declined for the First Time in China".
From ZeroHedge:

Did Tim Cook Violate Regulation "Fair Disclosure" By Emailing Jim Cramer To Save AAPL Stock This Morning
Earlier today, as AAPL stock was plummeting and had lost a whopping $75 billion in market cap, dropping as low as $92/share, CNBC's Jim Cramer pulled a rabit out of a hat, or in this case a previously undisclosed email out of his inbox. An email from AAPL CEO Tim Cook which said the following (as subsequently conveyed by Cramer to CNBC viewers):
Jim,

As you know, we don't give mid-quarter updates and we rarely comment on moves in Apple stock. But I know your question is on the minds of many investors.

I get updates on our performance in China every day, including this morning, and I can tell you that we have continued to experience strong growth for our business in China through July and August. Growth in iPhone activations has actually accelerated over the past few weeks, and we have had the best performance of the year for the App Store in China during the last 2 weeks.

Obviously I can't predict the future, but our performance so far this quarter is reassuring. Additionally, I continue to believe that China represents an unprecedented opportunity over the long term as LTE penetration is very low and most importantly the growth of the middle class over the next several years will be huge.

Tim
While we are delighted by Tim Cook's subjective take of AAPL's Chinese prospects, we have a different question: where is the public filing that accompanies this letter which constitutes nothing short of a private business update with an outside, and unregulated by Apple, market cheerleader?...MORE
On a generally down day Apple was off 2.5% at $103.12, considerably above the day's low of $92.00 but fading from the mid-day burst of enthusiasm that saw it trade to $108.80.