Top of the Order:
So, How Many Is That?: Last Friday, you could start placing orders for the new iPhone X. The newest iPhone officially goes on sale this Friday, one day after Apple releases its fiscal fourth-quarter earnings and sales results. Thus, the iPhone X will have no bearing on what Apple reports for the period that ended in September.
However, with a starting price of $999, the iPhone X will be a big deal when Apple reports how well it did during the final three month of this year. And, normally, Apple has liked to boast about how many orders were placed for a new iPhone during the first weekend that people can sign up for the thing. However, the company hasn’t said exactly how many iPhone X orders it received during those first 48 or 72 hours.
Instead, Apple has turned to superlatives to describe reaction to the iPhone X. According to Reuters, Apple said response to the iPhone X has been “off the charts,” and the company is working to get the iPhone X into the hands of everyone who wants it “as quickly as possible.”
How many hands is that? Well, Apple typically only likes to talk about things when it wants to talk about them. And on Apple’s earnings call Thursday, Chief Executive Tim Cook will certainly be asked about the iPhone X and whether he has any numbers to report.
Middle Innings:
Get Roger A Lawyer: Roger Stone, the long-time Republican strategist and former campaign aide to President Donald Trump, is threatening to sue Twitter after the social media company shut down his ability to tweet. Twitter suspended Stone’s account after he went off in a series of tweets, as word got out Friday about grand jury indictments coming down in connection with the investigation into ties between Russia and the Trump administration. Some of Stone’s tweets were directed toward the work of some CNN news anchors.
Bottom of the Lineup:
Tim, Mark … Meet Xi: Apple Chief Executive Tim Cook and Facebook head honcho Mark Zuckerberg were in China on Monday, but it wasn’t for a vacation or sightseeing. Cook and Zuckerberg were part of a group of executives meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping as part of a gathering of advisers at the business school of Beijing’s Tsinghua University.
Quote of the Day: “They had to do what they had to do.” — Brooke Amelia Peterson, who was speaking about Apple’s reasoning for firing her father, an Apple engineer, after she posted a video online in which her dad allowed her to test out an iPhone X before Apple began taking orders for the phone.
Sign up for the 60-Second Business Break newsletter at www.siliconvalley.com.
