Apple is the most successful and profitable luxury consumer-goods company that the world has ever seen. Its profit margins are stratospheric, its earnings per share continue to reach new all-time highs, and it has no real competitor in terms of being the high-end brand of choice in categories from personal computers to phones to digital watches.
Why it matters: It tops the list of retailers that any real estate developer wants if they're trying to create a luxury-shopping destination, and like Louis Vuitton, it never discounts.
Samsung announced Sunday at this year's CES electronics show that its 2019 lineup of smart TVs launching this spring will be able to play TV shows and movies from Apple’s iTunes via a native app.
Why it matters: Samsung and Apple remain rivals in tech, but they partner in significant ways. Samsung manufactures the Apple-designed chips used in the iPhone and iPad and supplies other components. And Samsung has struggled to provide content to its users — while Apple wants to ensure that its content is available wherever people want to consume it.
The dueling narratives of Apple and Nike's fourth quarters — driven largely by their success (or not) in China — highlight how the world's second-largest economy can impact some of the world's most influential companies.
The bottom line: Apple is a big company on an absolute level, but it's a tiny part of the Chinese economy, where consumers are just as fickle as they are anywhere else. What we learned this week is that Apple looms unrealistically large in investors' imaginations. China can help deliver spectacular growth, but that growth will always be bumpy, especially for foreigners. Investors shouldn't be surprised when it is.
Even if fully autonomous vehicles are still years away, automakers are rolling out automatic braking, computer-guided lane changing and other features that try to make conventional cars smarter and safer.
Why it matters: Tech continues to advance even as consumer demand lags behind the industry’s pace of investment. How consumersuse or misuse, embrace or reject these features — and what impact they have on safety — will determine the course of AV development as much as the tech itself.
For a year, the term "superstar" — in a business context — has referred to outsized cities, companies and individuals who stand heads and shoulders above their peers in terms of achievements like wealth and stature.
Over the coming year, look for the description to assume a more pejorative connotation, as "superstar" and "inequality" meld into one negative new zeitgeist.
