By Dan Moren
January 31, 2019 3:10 PM PT
The Back Page: How to Recover from a Quarter of Bad iPhone Sales in 90 days
Tim, this is Dan.
Look, I know that the recent bad news about iPhone sales has maybe got you down. Perhaps your emoji have tended towards the sad lately. You might even not be sending messages with Fireworks or Confetti anymore. I get it. It’s only natural. But I want to let you know that we’re here for you in this tough time.
Moreover, I think we have some suggestions for you on how to turn these iPhone lemons into wine. I’m pretty sure that’s the saying. Take a frown and turn it inside out, I mean. You get what I mean.
Anyway, first things first: let’s look at the bright side. You still sold $52 billion worth of iPhones, which is definitely nothing to sneeze at, unless you are allergic to money ha ha. Ha ha. But I understand that it can be hard when everybody expected you to sell $5_3_ billion iPhones. After all that’s a whole billion dollars off. That’s a lot of money! More than I’ll make in at least one lifetime. Ha. Uh. Ha.
There are plenty of other bright spots, too. Services! You’re doing really good on Services, man. I know you don’t want to talk about new services, but I know what you’re doing, you silver fox. wink I mean, you’ve already got streaming music, so it’s a no brainer that streaming video and games are coming down the pike. Just give me a call when you get to streaming books, eh? Eh?
But I know that all of that doesn’t necessarily assuage your deep-seated anguish over this quarter’s results, so maybe take a break. Engage in a little retail therapy. Open twenty-seven new Apple Stores across the world. That always makes you feel better. Or pick up that something you’ve been wanting but felt that you couldn’t justify, like a new racing bike or Adobe. Maybe take a walk around Apple Park, enjoy the sunshine on your face and just be very careful not to stray beyond the perimeter.
The key is to not let one bad quarter get you down. You’ve still got so much ahead of you, from new iPads to a revamped Mac Pro to adding at least six more cameras to the back of the next iPhone. These are the kind of things that you want to stick around for. Don’t let the analysts get you down with their incessant questions and attempts to ferret out what you’re doing about iPhone price umbrellas or service cost parasols. Skeptics gonna skept, man. I’m here to tell you that you, Timothy Donald Cook, are gonna be just fine. Just make sure that next quarter—and I can’t stress this enough—you sell more iPhones.
[Dan Moren is the East Coast Bureau Chief of Six Colors. You can find him on Mastodon at @dmoren@zeppelin.flights or reach him by email at dan@sixcolors.com. His latest novel, the supernatural detective story All Souls Lost, is out now.]