Apple Seeing No Benefit From Galaxy Note 7 Fires

Apple's earnings call this afternoon included a mention of the Galaxy Note 7 and Samsung's disaster of a recall therein. On the call that accompanied the earnings release, Apple made clear that Samsung's Galaxy Note 7 recall wasn't affecting iPhone sales negatively or positively. This, they said, was because Apple can't make enough iPhones to meet current demand as it is – so nothing else is going to affect them either way.

This shouldn't come as a surprise, as the real blowback for the Galaxy Note 7 debacle will happen in the near future. Right this minute there's still a bunch of Note 7 units out in the public – Samsung is making an effort to bring them all home for destruction. It's been suggested that their efforts to keep users in the fold will come in early 2017. This may only end up being inside South Korea, but we shall see.

Tim Cook commented further on iPhone supply equilibrium, too, suggesting that they'd reach such a point this year. Equilibrium in supply and demand would not necessarily be met for the iPhone 7 Plus, but would for the iPhone 7. This isn't necessarily a surprise, as Apple has said similar things in the past with iPhone launches of all sorts.

In this same call, Apple clarified that year-over-year growth for the iPad went from falling to flat. This is good news, as iPad sales had for a while been falling year-over-year. Now Apple continues to dominate what little there is of the tablet market, commanding over 80-percent of that market.

Cook also answered a question about a "dedicated home assistant" – like Google Home or Amazon's Echo. "Most people would like assistant with them all the time," said Cook.

We live in a mobile society and people are constantly moving from home to work and to other things they may be doing. The advantage of having an assistant on your phone is that it's with you all the time. That's not to say there's not a nice market for a home one, but usage of one on the phone will be much greater."