Intel Corporation HOLD

INTC : NASDAQ :

US$35.95 HOLD 
Target: US$35.00

COMPANY DESCRIPTION:
Intel Corporation is the world’s largest semiconductor
chip maker, in terms of revenue. The company develops
advanced integrated digital technology platforms and
components, primarily integrated circuits (ICs), targeted
at the computing and communications industries.
All amounts in US$ unless otherwise noted.

Technology — Hardware — Semiconductors and Related Technologies
STRONG DCG/IOTG TRENDS, STILL HEAVY MOBILE LOSSES; COMPELLING NEW PC TECHNOLOGIES, BUT
STABILITY INCREASINGLY RELIANT ON CONSUMER
Investment recommendation:

Intel’s analyst day in Santa Clara – mixed feelings as to upside to the stock from
current levels following the significant (and well-earned) appreciation over
the last 12 months. While the management team presented very strong
product portfolios and growth prospects for both DCG and IoTG, as well as
confidence to continue Moore’s Law beyond 10nm as a key differentiator,
Mobile loss forecasts for 2015 were worse than our expectation and only
modestly improved Y/Y.

Further, despite 2015 guidance for PCs that was
better than feared, market stabilization continues to become more dependent
on a recovery in consumer PC spending versus enterprise, which drove the
recent resurgence. We believe Intel is well positioned for solid earnings
growth while delivering attractive capital returns over the next few years.
However, we believe much of this fundamental strength is already reflected
in the stock given the recent appreciation, and lingering questions regarding
mobile ROI remain. We maintain our HOLD rating and $35 price target.
Investment highlights
 2015 guidance for mid-single digit revenue growth and gross margin of
62% were both slightly below our prior 6.2%/62.8% estimates, with
slightly lower 14nm yields potentially dragging down 1H/15 gross
margin. Guidance for modest Mobile revenue in 2015 with a loss still
over $3B was below our expectations for a more material improvement.
 However, key growth sectors of Data Center and IoT were guided above
our estimates for 2015. Further, management guided to slightly lower
capital spending Y/Y at $10.5B, and underpinned confidence in the longterm
business model by raising the annual dividend from $0.90 to $0.96,
bringing the dividend yield to 2.7%. Finally, while 2015 guidance for
only slightly down Y/Y sales in PCCG will be viewed as a relief to some
given an expanded channel, we wait for evidence of improving consumer
notebook sales into the headwind of the iPhone 6 upgrade cycle.
 We adjust our 2015 revenue, GAAP EPS, and non GAAP
EPS estimates from $59.3B/$2.45/$2.68 to $58.6B/$2.35/$2.57.
Valuation: Our $35 price target is based on shares trading at roughly 14x our
2015 non-GAAP EPS estimate, excluding stock-based compensation.

NEW go to  http://youroffshoremoney.com/

YEAR END UPDATE AND FORECAST

November 2014 – 40 % cash position

Year End Review and Forecast

A decade of increasing productive capacity has fattened supplies of commodities just as the world economy grows less commodity-intensive and investment demand wanes with traditional equity and bond markets performing well.

The idea that commodities were even a proper investment asset class for long-term investors was never fully demonstrated. Commodity prices tend to be mean reverting through successive cycles rather than instruments that produce cash income or build economic value.

Yet many in the financial industry promoted the idea of a “supercycle” fed by global industrialization and “peak oil” supply constraints. For sure, commodities look quite oversold in the short term and sentiment has turned severely against them, supporting the chances for a trading bounce or pause in the declines.

Yet even if the lows are in for oil or gold, the big picture is now looking decidedly less “super” for long-term commodity bulls. In one representative example of flagging investor interest in commodities, assets in the bellwether Pimco Commodity Real Return Strategy fund (PCRIX) have fallen below $13 billion – down by more than a third in two years.

With Blackberry For The Double

Stocks to Hold Forever

Buy them, forget about them, and never sell them
Three months ago, Marketocracy Master Mike Koza told us what Blackberry (NASDAQ:BBRY) needs to do to deliver a double. The following week, I published the second half of the the article and included the Marketocracy community’s thoughts on how Blackberry can produce the double within the next 2 years. Since our last article, Blackberry has been volatile but the stock has risen appreciably, a bit over 28%, and Mike is not selling.
. In a press release dated June 19, included these highlights:

• Cash and investments balance of $3.1 billion at the end of the fiscal first quarter, up from $2.7 billion in the prior quarter

• Adjusted Q1 gross margin of 48%, up from 43% in the prior quarter

• Reduced adjusted operating expenses by 57% year over year and 13% quarter over quarter

John Chen, Blackberry’s CEO, seems to have stemmed the negative cash flow and thereby reduced the risk that the company would have to accept a bad deal for shareholders in order to raise cash. Stabilizing the company’s cash flow is a great first step on the way to a double and in my view justifies the increase in the stock price we’ve seen so far.

The next item on Mike’s list is for the company to start growing again by focusing on the services that a security conscious professional needs in order to conduct real business.

Blackberry will never sell as many phones as Apple (NASDAQ:AAPL) because its products are not geared for users whose mobile messaging needs are mostly 3 character text messages or 140 character tweets. But while Blackberry’s core users are not as numerous as Apple’s, they value their mobile messaging service highly and are willing to pay a premium for it because it enhances their ability to conduct business.

Apple recognizes the attractiveness of the security conscious professional market because they recently announced a joint venture with IBM (NYSE:IBM) to go after it. The threat of Apple and IBM taking market share away from Blackberry in their core market is a new development that needs to be monitored.

It is too early to tell if John Chen will be successful in growing the business, but he is already taking some needed steps. On July 21, Chen hired Marty Beard (who he worked with at Sybase) to be his new COO. John Chen can’t rebuild Blackberry on his own. His success depends on getting great people to join his team. The fact that someone with Marty Beard’s background and credibility would risk his career to join Blackberry at this time is a big vote of confidence for John Chen’s plans for Blackberry.

When a stock moves up 28% in a few months, it is tempting to sell it and lock-in a gain. But the stock market does not offer many opportunities for doubles so routinely selling stocks just when the market is starting to agree with your investment thesis is a sure way to cut your winners off before they come to fruition thereby generating a poor long-term investment track record.

Great value investors like Mike Koza do their homework so when events start to play out in their favor they have the confidence to hold on for bigger gains, and the track record to back up their confidence.

ARM Holdings Raising Target Price $ 60

ARMH : NASDAQ : US$48.48
ARM : LSE
BUY 
Target: US$60.00 

 

COMPANY DESCRIPTION:
ARM is a leading semiconductor IP supplier to the diverse global
semiconductor market. ARM’s revenues are driven through a
licensing and royalty business model, with a majority of the
royalty sales driven by the mobile market including handsets,
smartphones, and tablets. ARM also supplies semiconductor IP to
the server, PC, and embedded markets and physical
implementation libraries and IP to semiconductor foundries.

Technology — Communications Technology — Semiconductors
INVESTOR CALL WITH MANAGEMENT; ARMV8
SHOULD DRIVE ROYALTY RATE EXPANSION
ACROSS MULTIPLE MARKETS, TIERS
Investment recommendation:

We participated in an open investor call on ARMv8 with Nandan Nayampally, ARM’s VP of Marketing for the CPU Group.
This note summarizes key points from the call. Since Apple’s A7 processor
announcement in September, the evolution of the 64-bit ARMv8 ecosystem
within the mobile market has progressed even more quickly than we had
anticipated. In fact, following Qualcomm and MediaTek both announcing
broad ARMv8 mobile roadmaps at MWC to include mid-tier smartphone
chips, we believe the path toward 64-bit smartphone/tablet ubiquity across
all tiers is well underway. Further, we believe ARMv8 opens new markets
including server and enterprise networking where ARM is less than 10%
penetrated today and ASPs tend to be much higher than in mobile. Given our
belief that near-term mobile royalty seasonality is well understood and
reflected in consensus estimates, we recommend investors accumulate ARM
shares ahead of reaccelerating royalty growth trends during 2H/14 and
2015. We reiterate our BUY rating and raise our price target to $60.
Investment highlights

 We believe ARM’s newest architecture, ARMv8, will both materially
increase the base royalty profile of ARM’s incumbent markets and open
new and equally large market opportunities including server and
enterprise networking where ARM has minimal market share today and
that should yield royalty rates at 2%+, or above the corporate average.
 In addition, given we believe ARMv8’s licensing applicability could be
broader than ARMv7 with the inclusion of these new markets, we believe
ARMv8 is still in the early innings of the licensing opportunity with
roughly 30 licenses to 20 companies today where ARMv7 has been
licensed 130+ times to roughly 80 companies.
 Our more detailed analysis of the ARMv8 architecture, including its
features and market applicability, and incremental licensing and royalty
revenue opportunities for ARM, is discussed at length in our September
19th ARM 64-bit white paper titled “ARM’s 64-bit smartphone coup:
Apple accelerates timing for higher royalties”.
Valuation: Our $60 price target is based on shares trading at roughly 38x our
2015 normalized EPS/ADS estimate and our royalty stream DCF.

Apple Update

AAPL : NASDAQ : US$550.50
BUY 
Target: US$570.00

COMPANY DESCRIPTION:
Apple designs, manufactures, and sells PCs, portable digital music players, and mobile communication devices, along with related software, services, peripherals, and networking solutions globally. The company was founded in 1976 and is headquartered in Cupertino, California.

Technology — Communications Technology — Wireless Equipment
SOLID RESULTS WITH HEALTHY GROSS MARGIN, BUT SOFTER IPHONE SALES IMPACT GUIDANCE
Investment recommendation:

Apple reported December quarter sales at the high-end of its previous guidance range with EPS above its implied guidance. However, total sales were below our expectations due to softer than anticipated iPhone sales of 51M versus our 54M estimate. While we anticipated softer Q2/F14 sales with seasonally lower iPhone and iPad product sales post the Holiday quarter, Q2/F14 guidance was below our expectations. Specifically, while our estimates anticipated a sharp Q/Q decline in iPhone sales during Q2/F14 consistent with Apple’s implied guidance, we anticipated this decline from our 54M December quarter estimate versus the 51M reported. Given the anticipated sell-off in the shares tomorrow combined with our belief Apple has a stronger pipeline of new products for C2014 versus C2013, we maintain our BUY rating. We also believe the continued large share buyback program should contribute to a return to EPS growth in F2014/15. We reiterate our BUY rating but lower our price target to $570.
Investment highlights
 Apple reported December quarter sales of $57.6B and EPS of $14.50 versus our $58.4B/$14.27 and StreetAccount consensus estimate of $57.5B/$14.09. While iPad and Mac sales exceeded our expectations, iPhone and iPod sales were below our estimates.
 We believe Apple’s soft Q2/F14 guidance is consistent with our expectations for a roughly 25% sequential decline in iPhone units post the Holiday season. We also note on a year-over-year basis, Apple’s guidance does not include inventory builds for iPhones or iPads, includes greater revenue deferrals and unfavorable F/X to create tougher year-over-year comparisons for growth. We were impressed with stronger gross margin results and guidance than our estimates.
 Primarily due to our lower iPhone unit estimates and somewhat due to a sharper decline in our iPod sales expectations, we lower our F2014 EPS estimate from $44.85 to $42.86 and our F2015 estimate from $50.24 to $47.56.
Valuation: Our $570 price target is based on shares trading at roughly 12x our F2015 EPS estimate

TTM Technologies BUY Target Price $ 11

TTMI : NASDAQ : US$9.00
BUY 
Target: US$11.00

COMPANY DESCRIPTION:
TTMI is a leading global supplier of printed circuit boards focused on advanced technologies including advanced HDI, rigid flex PCB, and substrate. Headquartered in Costa Mesa, CA, TTMI has approximately 18,000 employees worldwide and is listed on the Nasdaq. TTMI operates 15 specialized factories in the US and China.

Technology — Hardware — Semiconductor Devices and Related
Technologies
UPBEAT MANAGEMENT
Investment recommendation

Management continues to expect higher utilization rates to drive near term improvements to gross margin, while divestiture and plant closure should structurally improve margins for the long term. For Q1, we expect upside to estimates on iPad Air strength and a conservative reserve, while Networking weakness was captured in guidance despite recent concerns stemming from Cisco’s outlook. We are reiterating a BUY rating and $11 price target.
Strong iPad Air boosting PCB suppliers
For Q4, supply chain conversations indicate strong demand for iPad Air is resulting in upward revisions to forecasts for PCB suppliers. Further, we believe production for the retina version of the iPad Mini is likely to pick up in Q1, following constrained production levels in Q4, potentially offsetting some of TTMI’s normal negative Q1 seasonality.
Cautious Cisco commentary not incremental to TTMI’s outlook

We believe TTMI captured Networking weakness in its Q4 guidance. The company has very little exposure to set top boxes and is still seeing good demand in the high end of networking (advanced routers and data center). TTMI doesn’t participate in federal so it is not seeing any impact from the government shutdown, while the guide from the earnings call captured a softer Asia wireless infrastructure, with Networking overall guided down for Q4.
Inventory reserves look conservative
We believe upside to margin expectations is possible if the $3M of the warranty claim taken as reserves against future claims turns out to be high. Most of the products these boards shipped into were sold last

Intel Corporation CANNIBALIZATION BY TABLETS CONTINUES

INTC : NASDAQ : US$22.86
HOLD 
Target: US$20.00

COMPANY DESCRIPTION:
Intel Corporation is the world’s largest semiconductor chip maker, in terms of revenue. The company develops advanced integrated digital technology platforms and components, primarily integrated circuits (ICs), targeted at the computing and communications industries.

Semiconductor Devices and Related Technologies
PCs TO END 2013 WITH A WHIMPER AS CANNIBALIZATION BY TABLETS CONTINUES
Investment recommendation
We are lowering our estimates for Intel and reiterate a HOLD rating based on weakness in the electronics supply chain that points to a steepening decline for PCs in 2013. Display suppliers, notebook ODMs and distributors all point to 2H weakness, especially for notebooks, whose units drive roughly two-thirds of the PC market. Notebook weakness stems from competition from iPad and other tablets, and with new launches from Apple and others, we expect the cannibalization trend to continue.
Strong iPad5 push to accelerate PC Cannibalization
We believe tablet refreshes by Apple and the proliferation of low cost tablets in China point to continuing and perhaps accelerating cannibalization of notebooks. We expect the PC market to decline by 10% in 2013 and another 4% in 2014. The iPad5 (launching mid-October) appears to be a true redesign with a thinner form factor and we note that build forecasts for this device have edged higher for Q3 and Q4. While changes to mix could be driving the forecasts higher, we believe a thinner design could serve to divert demand from higher end consumer notebooks. Meanwhile, at the low end of the price spectrum, the China white-box tablet market is seeing strong demand, growing from roughly 50 million units in 2012 to nearly 100 million in 2013. Most of these tablets are for the consumer market with prices ranging from $50-$100 USD.
Valuation
INTC’s price target of $20 is 11x our C2014 EPS estimate of $1.79 plus net cash of $0.83/share.

ARM Holdings plc

The official logo for the ARM processor architecture (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

ARMH : NASDAQ : US$47.24
ARM : LSE
BUY 
Target: US$56.00

COMPANY DESCRIPTION:
ARM is a leading semiconductor IP supplier to the diverse global semiconductor market. ARM’s revenues are driven through a licensing and royalty business model, with a majority of the royalty sales driven by the mobile market
including handsets, smartphones, and tablets. ARM also supplies semiconductor IP to the server, PC, and embedded markets and physical implementation libraries and IP to semiconductor foundries.
All amounts in US$ unless otherwise noted.

Investment recommendation:
From ARM’s analyst day yesterday in London where ARM management highlighted strong longterm market and royalty growth opportunities in both high- and low-tier smartphones.

We believe ARM is well positioned to benefit from quickly increasing emerging market feature phone to smartphone upgrades, ramping low-tier tablets, and high-tier smartphone platform refreshes that should drive royalty TAM growth and rate expansion. Further, with a growing number of ARM partners moving toward multi-core Cortex-A, big.LITTLE, and ARMv8 designs at leading edge process nodes, we anticipate strong license sales in the near to medium term will drive strong royalty revenue growth and both operating and earnings leverage long term. We reiterate our BUY rating and raise our price target to $56.
Investment highlights
 Our Q1/13 monthly handset sales surveys and recent March quarter results and June quarter guidance for ARM mobile chipset partners are consistent with ARM’s estimates for very strong growth of the low- and mid-tier smartphone markets and also resilient growth of the high-tier market driven flagship launches and 4G/LTE upgrades.
 At its analyst day, ARM shared its target of 15-25% smartphone royalty sales CAGR through 2017 and anticipates smartphone unit CAGR of 20% for the industry during the same period. In fact, this estimate includes growth in both the high- and lower-tier smartphone markets, and we believe ARM will generate significant royalty revenue growth from both tiers driven by a royalty rate expansion multiplier in the slower-growing high-tier market and upgrades
from lower royalty feature phones in lower tiers.
 Due to increased royalty estimates from lower tier smartphones and tablets, we are increasing our 2013 earnings/ADS estimate from $1.01 to $1.02 and our 2014 estimate from $1.31 to $1.35.

Valuation:

Our $56 price target (from $52) is based on shares trading at
roughly 42x our 2014 normalized earnings/ADS estimate.

Related articles

• ARM’s Sales Beat Analysts’ Estimates on Demand for Smartphones (bloomberg.com)

Apple Target $ 600 Q2/F13 PREVIEW; UPDATING ESTIMATES

Image via CrunchBase

AAPL : NASDAQ : US$423.20
BUY 
Target: US$600.00

Q2/F13 PREVIEW; UPDATING ESTIMATES

 

Investment recommendation:

Our monthly and overall March quarter global handset surveys indicated iPhone 5 sales declined consistent with normal seasonal patterns after very strong December holiday quarter sales. However, our surveys indicated stronger sales of iPhone 4/4S models at reduced prices, and we have updated our iPhone estimates.
Given our expectations for a summer iPhone refresh combined with competitor smartphone ramps including the Samsung Galaxy S4 during the transitional June quarter, we believe Apple could lose meaningful near-term market and profit share before the iPhone 5S refresh. Longer term, we maintain our belief Apple has a strong product pipeline that should result in reaccelerating Y/Y earnings growth during 2H/C2013.

In the near term, we believe Apple is likely to increase cash returns to shareholders. We reiterate our BUY rating and $600 price target.
Investment highlights
 Our March quarter global handset surveys indicated the iPhone 5, 4S, and 4 maintained leading share of the high-end smartphone market with improving supply and a stronger mix of iPhone 4 and 4S sales than our expectations.

 Based on reduced iPhone pricing combined with our increased iPhone 4 and 4S sales assumptions, we are increasing our March/June quarter iPhone unit estimates from 34.5M/25M to 37M/27M. However, with an increased mix of iPhone 4/4S sales, we are decreasing our ASP estimate from $651 in the December quarter to $601 in the March quarter.
 These adjustments slightly raise our F2013 EPS estimate from $43.59 to $43.86 and our F2014 estimate from $50.00 to $50.16.
Valuation:

Our $600 price target is based on shares trading at roughly 12x our F2014 EPS estimate.

Related articles

• Apple ANTICIPATE IPHONE 5S SUMMER REFRESH; (amp2012.com)

Stock Market Magic: Building Your Apprentice Millionaire Portfolio 2012: All you need to succeed in today’s stock market

RF Micro Devices Target $ 7

English: A ridiculous line of people waiting for the iPhone 3G outside of the Apple Store on 5th Ave. between 58th St. and 59th St., NYC, July 12, 2008. I was not in the line. pictured: the Apple Store entrance (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

RFMD : NASDAQ : US$5.32
BUY 
Target: US$7.00

COMPANY DESCRIPTION:
RF Micro Devices is a leading supplier of power amplifiers, front end modules and other RF components for mobile devices (handsets, smartphones, tablets) and communications infrastructure.

Investment recommendation:

We believe RFMD is well positioned to deliver strong growth in C2013/14 driven by share gains in flagship LTE smartphone platforms including Samsung, Nokia, BlackBerry, and Apple. Further, given RFMD’s strong position in mid- and low-tier believe RFMD is well positioned to benefit from elastic smartphone demand in emerging markets including China.

Overall, we believe RFMD should grow faster than the RFIC market in F14/15 and improved capacity utilization should drive margin leverage. We upgrade RFMD shares from HOLD to BUY and raise our price target to $7 from $5.50.
Investment highlights
 Given RFMD’s improved LTE portfolio including Phenom PAs and antenna switching solutions, we believe RFMD is well positioned to gain content share in flagship smartphone platforms including the Samsung Galaxy S4, Nokia Lumia and Asha series, BlackBerry Z10 and Q10, and potentially Apple’s iPhone 5S. In addition, we believe RFMD is less exposed to softer near-term iPhone sales that should have a greater impact to RFMD’s competitors.
 Further, our market analysis indicates ramping sales of affordable 3G smartphones from Chinese OEMs powered by Qualcomm QRD, MediaTek, and Spreadtrum turnkey solutions, and we believe RFMD has strong share, particularly in TD-SCDMA smartphones.
 Finally, while we concede Qualcomm’s entry into the CMOS PA market could potentially shrink the long-term TAM for PA suppliers, including RFMD, we believe the intermediate impact to RFMD’s market share, design wins, sales, and earnings are negligible.
 We maintain our above-consensus F2014 pro forma EPS estimate of $0.42 and introduce our F2015 estimate of $0.63.
Valuation:

Our $7 price target is based on shares trading at roughly 11x our F2015 pro forma EPS estimate.

Related articles

• Buy, Sell, or Hold: RF Micro Devices (fool.com)

Apple To Build Macs In America Again : CEO Tim Cook

Image via CrunchBase

Bloomberg News

Apple Inc. plans to spend more than $100-million next year on building Mac computers in the U.S., shifting a small portion of manufacturing away from China, the country that has handled assembly of its products for years.

“Next year we’re going to bring some production to the U.S.,” Cook said in an interview with Bloomberg Businessweek. “This doesn’t mean that Apple will do it ourselves, but we’ll be working with people and we’ll be investing our money.”

Apple, which until the late 1990s made and assembled many products in the U.S., moved manufacturing to Asia to take advantage of the region’s lower labour costs. The planned investment makes up a sliver of Apple’s $121.3-billion in cash, and probably won’t meaningfully affect profit margins. Still, it reflects pressure on companies to create even a modest number of domestic jobs as the unemployment rate hovers near 8% and the economy rebounds from the recession that ended in 2009.

“I don’t think we have a responsibility to create a certain kind of job,” Cook said. “But I think we do have a responsibility to create jobs.”

Cook discussed the investment plans in an interview that touched on his relationship with Apple co-founder Steve Jobs, the recent dismissal of senior executives and the company’s competition with Samsung Electronics Co.

While Cook didn’t outline where the manufacturing would happen or how much would be produced in the U.S., he said the company will work with partners and that the operations would include more than just final assembly.

Shares Decline

Apple’s shares declined the most in almost four years Wednesday on concern that the company will lose ground in smartphones to Nokia Oyj in China while giving up market share to Google Inc. in tablets.

China Mobile Ltd., China’s largest wireless carrier, agreed to carry the Lumia 920T, a device based on Microsoft Corp.’s Windows Phone 8 software.

In another announcement that may have fuelled the stock’s slide, research firm IDC said Wednesday that Apple’s share of the tablet market will slip to 53.8% this year from 56.3% in 2011, while Google’s will increase.

Creating Jobs

Many of the parts that go into the iPhone and iPad already are made in the U.S. This includes the display glass, which is made in Kentucky, Cook said.

Apple also has created jobs in the mobile-software industry through the introduction of the iPhone in 2007, which fuelled an explosion in creation of applications, he said.

Besides building a new headquarters in Cupertino, California, Apple is working on a campus in Austin, Texas, Cook said. The company is building new data centers in Nevada and Oregon, while expanding an existing one in Maiden, North Carolina, he said.

Before shifting work abroad, Apple had handled manufacturing in such locations as as Elk Grove, California, near Sacramento, and Fountain, Colorado, near Colorado Springs.

Mac desktop and laptop computers — once Apple’s cornerstone — have been dwarfed by the iPhone and iPad more recently. With sales of $23.2 billion on 18.2 million units last year, Macs accounted for just 15% of total revenue. The device is currently manufactured mostly in China.

Other companies that have said they’ll shift production back to the U.S. from overseas include Caterpillar Inc. and General Electric Co. Google Inc. this year delayed a wireless media device that it had pledged to build in California.

Cook, in the interview, also addressed his recent decision to revamp Apple’s management team to improve cooperation among groups. Senior Vice President Scott Forstall, a main architect of the iPhone software that’s now on more than 400 million Apple devices, was fired in October amid complaints that he clashed with other senior executives.

Samsung Ties

“These moves take collaboration to a whole different level,” Cook said, without discussing specific executives. “We already were — to use an industry phrase that I don’t like — best of breed. But it takes us to a whole new level. So that’s what it’s all about.”

Cook also said Apple has a complicated relationship with Samsung, one of Apple’s biggest component suppliers and its chief rival in the smartphone and tablet markets.