Morningstarin analyytikko Brian Colello arvioi Applen kehittäjäfoorumin julkistuksia 13.6:
Our initial thoughts from Apple’s annual Worldwide Developers Conference is that customer switching costs around the iOS ecosystem remain intact, but none of the new improvements to Apple’s software, apps, or services will significantly increase customer lock-in. Several items were meaningful and much-needed, such as the addition of real-time traffic to Apple Maps and facial recognition and other artificial intelligence capabilities to Photos, which gives us comfort that Apple’s massive research and development budget (likely to be $10 billion this fiscal year) is not fruitless. However, these enhancements are likely to only bring Apple on par with other third-party services like Google Photos. Nonetheless, we will maintain our narrow moat and positive moat trend ratings for Apple, as we reiterate that the firm has established modest customer switching costs via hardware, software, and services that will compel most current iPhone customers to continue to buy newer premium-priced iPhones well into the future. We maintain our $133 fair value estimate for Apple and continue to view the stock as one of the better investment ideas within the technology sector.
To us, the most compelling announcements at the conference should make Apple’s newer products better, such as faster Watch app uploads and expanded Siri functionality within Apple TV, but not necessarily stickier, at least at this point. We’re encouraged by Apple’s progress in AI, which was a hot topic on the heels of developer conferences by Google and Facebook in recent weeks, but Apple is probably still behind these two services leaders and the company (like others) will need to flawlessly execute on these newly announced features. Perhaps the best bet for a stickier and more robust iOS will come from Apple’s move to open up Siri, Maps, and iMessage to developers, which could enable a richer user experience for all iOS customers.
Improvements to tvOS were the most compelling at the conference, in our view, and Apple may have a chance to build a solid early-mover advantage here, particularly if it were able to supply a live content subscription bundle to the TV box as well. Apple TV’s latest Remote functionality has been replicated on the iPhone, with the added benefit of allowing iPhone users to type in text into the TV screen. Siri search on tvOS has also been expanded, allowing customers to search for a given live network (say, ESPN 2) inside of a given tvOS app (say, the Watch ESPN app within tvOS). Apple’s new single sign-on authentication feature should also reduce the need for users to type in multiple, annoying authentication codes before viewing content.
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