Archived Post

AWT News Update: May 3, 2017

A nice, calm day after the storm of an Apple earnings report. Here’s today’s news:

  • Apple closed slightly down from yesterday’s near-record close
  • Quick! Run to the TV. Tim Cook is on CNBC’s Mad Money with Jim Cramer
  • Rumor has it that Inventec is building the alleged Apple Siri speaker that may be announced as soon as next month
  • Beware the Google Docs phishing attack!
  • Enterprise sales are booming for Apple

The text version of the podcast can be viewed below. To listen to the podcast here, click the play button on the player below. Note to Apple News readers: you’ll need to visit Apple World Today in order to listen to the podcast.

Text Version

This is Steve Sande for Apple World Today, and you’re listening to the AWT News Update for May 3rd, 2017.

Of course, the day after the Apple earnings report Apple’s stock was down a bit…but not much. The results were actually quite good, but not good enough to sway investors. Shares in Apple closed down $0.45 to $147.06 after dropping as low as $144.27 during the morning.

About the time we post this podcast, Tim Cook will be on CNBC’s Mad Money show with host Jim Cramer. They’ll talk about the future of Apple, China, iPhone sales and more. You can watch the show on the 4th-generation Apple TV with the CNBC app.

That Amazon Echo-like Siri speaker seems to be getting closer to being a real device. Taiwan’s Economic Daily News today reported that according to its supply chain sources, Inventec is either assembling components for the device or building the entire thing. Invented is no stranger to building Apple devices, as it is currently the company that makes Apple’s wildly popular AirPods. It’s suggested that the device will use Siri as a voice interface to stream music, control HomeKit devices, report weather and new, perform web searches, and so on. If this device is announced soon — and word has it that it may be released as soon as next month at WWDC 2017 — KHI Securities analyst Ming-Chi Kuo thinks it could ship at least 10 million units in 2017.

There’s a phishing attack going on right now. If you get an email from anyone — even a friend or coworker — that says that person has invited you to view a document, do NOT click the Open in Docs button. You’ll be asked to sign into your Google account to see the alleged document, at which time your account has been compromised. I received one of these emails today with a send to field of “hhhhhhhhhhhhh@mailinator.com” from a former editor at a publishing company I used to write for. I haven’t heard from her in years, so I just deleted the email, which is what you should do if you see anything similar. Until Google has this under control, the best bet if you’re not sure a document sharing request is valid is to just go to Google Docs directly and see if there’s a new document there for you. Chance are pretty good that there won’t be one.

One of the more impressive bits of yesterday’s earnings call was finding out what corporations are now deploying Apple products as internal standards. While almost no corporation can hope to match the deployment done at IBM, the two newest companies are no slouches. Apple CEO Tim Cook noted that the iPhone is the “corporate standard smartphone” for all 620,000 global employees of Volkswagen, although it’s not sure that every worker actually receives a phone. The other big company that is new to the Apple game is Capital One, which has equipped its associates with Macs and Apple Watches. The bank uses over 40 native iOS apps running on nearly 30,000 iPhones and iPads. While the company showed stagnant iPhone sales in the past quarter compared to last year, these corporate deals are sure to be making things better than they would be without enterprise sales.

That’s all for today; I’ll be back tomorrow afternoon with another edition of the AWT News Update.

Steve Sande
the authorSteve Sande
Steve is the founder and former publisher of Apple World Today and has authored a number of books about Apple products. He's an avid photographer, an FAA-licensed drone pilot, and a really bad guitarist. Steve and his wife Barb love to travel everywhere!