They are forced to by their hardware business model. Almost every entry point to the Apple ecosystem is through hardware and nobody can meet QC and scale of Chinese factories. Too much of a risk to block China and risk supply chain disruptions.
... then i just got an email receipt from my xbox gold subscription. curses!
What's the story behind your key?
That "single device company" makes just half of its revenue from iPhones. Recurring services revenue accounted for almost 25%.
They can structure their financial reports however they like, but it doesn't change the fact that their entire ecosystem is directly or indirectly tied to that one device.
One way to think about this is that Apple isn't diversified enough. Another way to think about it is that Microsoft's long tail is a mess.
Would they? Microsoft also own other stuff they monetize like GitHub, Linkedin, X-Box, and a shit tonne of gaming IP inclusing Activision Blizzard, plus other things I'm surely forgetting.
Looks pretty diverse to me comapred to a company who's revenue stream is limited by the ammounts of walled garden phones it can sell and who's grasp over its walled garden can be regualted away by the EU waving their wand the same way they lost the Lightnig cable revenue stream.
Can Apple keep up this momentum in the long run and keep growing by getting people to buy more expensive stuff, or will they slowly loose steam and stagnate?
Office and Azure make up half of their revenue, but their other revenue streams are actually different things, like Windows, gaming, LinkedIn, Bing advertising. It's actual diversification.
With the introduction of IE in 1995 and its deep integration into Win95 and ruthless take-no-prisoners assault on Netscape, Microsoft was probably already aware that they were starting to resemble a monopoly, given Apple's poor sales and market share at the time. My personal take is that MS propped up Apple to help appear to have a competitor ahead of the Antitrust action in 2001[2].
[1]https://www.cnbc.com/2017/08/29/steve-jobs-and-bill-gates-wh...
[2]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Microsoft_Cor....
I'm _pretty_ sure Apple could have gotten the money from elsewhere if they really had to. It's history now, so we'll never know for sure, but I'd bet that they could have found other investors if they really had to. People seem to think it's a black and white scenario - money from MS or death! But I don't think it ever was.
They were already on a bit of a shaky nail for a while when they relied only on Office and Windows, but their shift to the cloud (and resultant cuddly Embrace of Linux) has paid off well for them, so overall a smart move on their part.
In ~theory~ such an announcement would be priced into the markets since market capitalization is also dependent on future expected returns.
Maybe investors just don't think everyone will be wearing $3000 digital fisheye goggles in a few years.
https://www.barrons.com/livecoverage/apple-wwdc-2023/card/ap...
Also Microsoft is still selling HoloLens but for selected audience.
Of course investors aren't rewarding them for an upcoming VR headset which is yet to be proven. Why would they?