Is it time to sell Apple stock?

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If you had asked me 5 years ago, “What would be a solid stock for a decade?” I would have told you Apple. Hell, I probably had 25%-33% of my portfolio in Apple stock. I loved the stock and the company all these years. However once Nvidia and the AI boom came around in early 2024, I started to rethink my position on Apple.

First off, Apple seems to be a hardware company moreso than software. AI is more of a software stack ala Siri. Apple isn’t a direct competitor to Nvidia. They’re not even a direct competitor to OpenAI. The only thing AI related to Apple is shitty ass Siri. Like c’mon, you’ve had Siri for over a decade and she still sucks [compared to Google.] That’s why they haven’t said anything about AI except that they might partner with Google Gemini, which basically acknowledges Siri is inferior. So there’s no AI “boost” for the stock.

Second, of course the DOJ suing them isn’t a good sign. Not sure what’s going to happen here, but it’s just not going to be good news. I don’t think they’ll break up the company; I think they’re just going to have to let other developers open an App store like what they’re doing with Epic games in the EU. This’ll just decrease software revenue.

China’s sales dropped 24% year over year for the first 6 weeks in 2024. China contributes 20% of Apple sales and so this isn’t a good sign. I think with the whole Evergrande debacle, this will reduce Chinese discretionary spending.

I think people are waiting longer to upgrade iPhones these days. I think the last major update was the iPhone X with FaceID. After that, it’s just been minor upgrades. People don’t see any need to upgrade their phones every year or two or three.

The Apple Vision Pro doesn’t seem very popular and is too niche. After the first week of hearing about the device, you just don’t hear about it anymore. It’s just too expensive for the average consumer.

They gave up on the car, which I think is a good thing. But that’s another product line that we’re not going to see. Like, what else is there? It’s just Macs, phones, Airpods and iPads.

Warrn Buffet sold 10M shares ($2B) in the last quarter of 2023. This is still a rounding error for him (only 1% of his Apple holdings,) but he used to gush about how he loves Apple. These days, you don’t hear him mention Apple anymore, kinda like ignoring a misbehaving child. Or maybe we’ll find out that he sold more off in Q1 2024.

Apple today reminds me of Microsoft between 2000 and 2010 where the stock is just stagnant due to no major growth opportunities. It’s still a good company and I still have it in my index funds; I just don’t see it as a growth company to hold the individual stock. The major positive it still has going for it is that kids would rather have an iPhone over an Android.