Max Weinbach on iPhone Duo, HomeView & AAPL Reaching into Other Industries

SPEAKER_1 (0:00)

Now, here to help us break down what's driving all of the enthusiasm and of course what it means for Apple's next chapter. We are joined by Max Weinbach, tech analyst at Creative Strategies. Max, thanks so much for joining us today. Now, the buzz around this iPhone Duo has been pretty substantial. And so, in your opinion, is this just another successful launch or are we looking at a genuine blockbuster product cycle for Apple?

Max Weinbach (0:23)

I think we're looking at a genuine blockbuster product cycle for Apple. The iPhone Duo is just kind of the start of it. If you look at what they've launched or are going to launch the next four weeks, it's iPhone Duo this Friday, it finally becomes available.

The next week is HomePod, Mini and Apple TV. The following week is apparently new MacBook Pros, new iPad Mini, new iMac, all of which was announced actually about an hour ago that the event was going to be happening in LA next week at their Pro Intel event. And then the following week is HomeView. So, iPhone Duo is absolutely going to be a blockbuster. I genuinely believe they will sell as many of these as they can manufacture. And right now, it looks like that demand is far outstripping supply. It's backordered, I believe, in the US until January 25th of 2027 at the moment, which is no surprise, even though it is a $2,000 device. And I think maybe as we get into the new MacBook Pros with the redesign that are going to come up, we're going to see a very similar thing where these are backordered well into next year.

SPEAKER_3 (1:23)

If we set that to the size, I agree with you if you're going to have success with a new iPhone model, it's going to come from something being different. This is really the first real different thing that we've seen, and I don't know how many, let's call it 10 plus models, it seems, for this. I've made the case, Max, that the iPhone has been more of a staple product. What motivates me to get one is that I break the one I have because you need it.

But when it comes to the other products, throughout the last, I don't know, 10, 15 years, the only, I guess, super successful products with addition to the iPhone that I can think of have been the Apple Watch, which dominates wearables, and of course AirPods, which dominate Bluetooth headsets. When you look at some of these new things within the home space, do you think they had the potential to unseat and steal a serious market share from, I don't know, Google or Amazon that have pretty established places within that marketplace?

Max Weinbach (2:19)

I think so. A lot of the market industry at a technical level has been moving away from a bunch of the closed systems to an open center called Matter. So if I get a smart thermostat, I can connect it to anything that supports Matter. This is Google, Amazon, and Apple. So if you already have a smart home, you can more or less swap out that hub with anything you want. I think the real advantage Apple has in this space is unlike the other competitors, those are locked into just your home.

If you're using an Amazon product, it is your Amazon account and whatever you have connected to it. Google is more or less the same way even with Gemini or maybe your Google account. What Apple HomeView has is it's your entire iPhone, and it's your entire family's iPhones as well. So you're getting your text, your emails, your call, your calendar, any widgets that are there, anything from Apple CarPlay will show up. There's far more utility in a HomeView, and most of the industry again has been moving towards open standards. I think it is not out of the question to see people that have maybe 10,000s of dollars in these other ecosystems swap out the cheapest $100 part, which is your hub, to Apple's $300 HomeView just because it lets them do more.

SPEAKER_1 (3:25)

Okay, and so I think a good point there. And so as far as right now, what we assess is more important. Did you see it more important, really, how many iPhones they can actually ship or sell, or how many people are still perhaps waiting to buy one?

Max Weinbach (3:37)

I think it's a little bit of both.

The iPhone Duo apparently is very difficult to manufacture. If you look at what it is, it's an ultra-thin folding display with two layers of ultra-thin glass on it, a custom adhesive Apple designed and created just for this. It has a custom layer on top with nanotexture. They designed, again, that material, the process to actually make the nanotexture. A lot of this is extremely difficult to make. I think that there will be demand as long as they can make them. This is until it's refreshed next year.