An iPhone Flip could easily beat the Galaxy Z Flip 5 and Razr+ — here’s how

An iPhone Flip could blow away Galaxy Z Flip 5 and Motorola Razr+ — here’s how

iPhone Flip foldable iPhone

It’s a good time for foldable phones right now. That’s because for once consumers have several good options from which to choose. Having reviewed the Samsung Galaxy Z Flip 5 and Motorola Razr+, I think Apple has a strong chance at overtaking the flip-style foldable space with a rumored iPhone Flip.

I’ve detailed how Samsung and Motorola's latest foldable flip phones stack against each other in my face-off comparison, so Apple could take the opportunity to learn what people want in a flip style foldable.

Rumors around the iPhone Flip continue to swirl as they head into the fall, and with Apple’s iPhone 15 event speculated for September 13, they could very well be given a teaser of some sort about a foldable device. I think it’s inevitable for Apple to release one, especially when you look back at the company’s history. There were smartphones long before the original iPhone, but Apple took its time, and now most every smartphone has aped Apple's design — for better or worse.

That same could happen with the iPhone Flip. Here’s what I think the iPhone Flip needs in order to beat current foldables like the Galaxy Z Flip 5 and Razr+.

The Dynamic Island on an iPhone 14 Pro Max

Whether you religiously use it or not, I think the iPhone’s Dynamic Island would be more appropriate on the back of an iPhone Flip — somewhere closer to its cameras. While I do appreciate how the Motorola Razr+’s large outer screen offers access to all apps, I don’t think Apple would be as inclined to follow the same approach.

That’s because Apple isn’t much about having all the bells and whistles in its iPhones, but rather, focusing the attention more on the experience. We’ve seen this before in how Apple transformed mobile web browsing with mobile Safari and multi-touch gestures, along with FaceTime and how it revolutionized the way they video chat.

Rather than giving users access to all their apps on the outer screen, Apple could enhance the Dynamic Island experience in such a way that's more usable.

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Image of iPhone 14 Pro Max, Motorla Razr+, and Samsung Galaxy Z Flip 4 next to one another.

There’s no arguing that today’s foldables still need a lot of work before they’re contenders for the best phone battery life. You’d have to opt for mini-tablet foldables like the Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 5 or Google Pixel Fold in order to get extended battery life.

Nevertheless, the iPhone Flip could Improve in this area against the battery life of the Galaxy Z Flip 5 and Razr+. In Tom’s Guide’s battery benchmark test, both flip style foldables lasted about 10 hours. The iPhone Flip’s success in this area will mainly hinge on a couple of factors: how thin it’ll be and what size battery it’ll hold.

As I look at my iPhone 14 Pro next to the Razr+ on my desk, I can see Apple’s flagship is thicker in size. Just for context, the iPhone 14 Pro achieved an outstanding mark of 10 hours and 13 minutes. If Apple were to keep the iPhone Flip’s overall size similar to the iPhone 14 Pro, it would automatically have a leg up against the competition.

Samsung Galaxy Z Flip 5 review photos.

One of the coolest features I’ve tried on the Razr+ and Galaxy Z Flip 5 are how apps are optimized for their respective flex modes, along with enhanced multitasking that can run up to three apps simultaneously. Apple’s iPhones have never been big on true multitasking, but it would be the natural evolution for an iPhone Flip.

Not only should native apps get optimized layouts when the iPhone Flip is folded halfway (like the calendar, email, and FaceTime apps), but it’d be nice to finally get true side-by-side multitasking on the iPhone. The iPad has long offered it and the iPhone’s overdue for it. I personally can’t believe we’ve been content with app switching on the iPhone for this long — something that was first introduced back with iOS 4.

This would probably be the most important new feature to take the iPhone to the next level, and for a foldable, it would absolutely be necessary. SharePlay would inherently be even more functional on a foldable iPhone Flip, such as being able to FaceTime with another iPhone user while sharing your screen with them.

Image of iPhone 14 Pro Max, Motorla Razr+, and Samsung Galaxy Z Flip 4 next to one another.

It’s hard to tell if Apple will tease us with an iPhone Flip during its fall iPhone 15 fall event. However, it could make for the perfect “one more thing” teaser at the end of the event — much like the Apple Vision Pro’s announcement at WWDC 2023. That could pave the way for a release in 2024, but the question would be exactly when. If Apple waits until its usual fall iPhone event, it would compete with all the other iPhones. Perhaps it could be released in the first half of the year? That would be just the right amount of separation.

Beyond its expected announcement and release date, the other thing I’m curious about is its price. Apple has the potential to dominate the foldables market if this iPhone Flip hones in on all the points I’ve detailed. But ultimately, it’s going to come down to price. If rumors about the iPhone 15 Pro Max leaning closer to $1,299 do turn out true, it could provide Apple the justification to position the iPhone Flip in between the iPhone 15 Pro and iPhone 15 Pro Max — effectively at that $1,100 (assuming the iPhone 15 Pro stays at $999).

Whatever happens, I’m confident that Apple will spur the adoption rate for foldables.

The Case For Intel: An Illustration Of The ‘Value’ Investing Mindset

(Photo by Leon Neal/Getty Images)

[Note to self: I should have written this column a year ago, when the story became more or less obvious – it would have made me look a lot smarter now…😏]

[Note to the reader: This is a lengthy analysis – anyone who is impatient can skip to the last few paragraphs for the summary.]

Intel is one of the most important companies in America. They invented the microprocessor. They laid the foundation for the digital era, reaching now into practically every corner of the economy. They enabled Microsoft, Google, Facebook and other digital giants to become what they are today. The Internet and the “Cloud” still run mainly on Intel hardware.

(Photo Illustration by Budrul Chukrut/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images)

Yet, sometime around 2018 Intel is said to have “stumbled.”

Soon, it was seen as more than a stumble. Much more.

Revenue did continue to grow for a while, and the financial market was complacent. The company plowed through a couple of down quarters, but its market capitalization reached an all-time high of almost $300 Bn in January 2020. It even weathered the pandemic and reached nearly the same level again in April 2021.

Market Capitalizations in the Semiconductor Sector Jan 2020

Then, last year, on July 28 2022, Intel released its 2nd quarter results.

The ugly fundamentals all pointed in one direction.

Analysts were… disappointed. Deeply disappointed. Worse – they were embarrassed. Intel’s results were so far below expectations that it made them look bad, as though they didn’t have a good grasp on the situation.

Now, the market was aggrieved. The stock fell 10% the next day – and continued to slide. In the next two months, shares were down 40% from July, and 65% from its April 2021 high.

Intel's Slide

It was value destruction on a massive scale – in 18 months the company’s market capitalization lost $176 Bn overall.

Things got much worse. The 1st quarter of 2023 was a disaster. Quarterly revenue fell below $12 Bn, the lowest since 2010. The company lost almost $3 Bn in that quarter and posted the first 12-month loss in decades. There were large lay-offs and executive pay-cuts. The dividend was slashed by 2/3rds.

Intel's Quarterly Revenue

Intel's Quarterly Operating Profit

Intel's Gross Profit Margins

The world’s strongest and most valuable semiconductor company had been shattered. Nvidia, with less than half the revenue, and half the profit, was worth seven times more – becoming the first trillion dollar semiconductor company. Intel now lagged even its perennial ex-also-ran “remora” – AMD.

Market Capitalizations in the Semiconductor Sector Aug 2023

Analysts’ sentiment turned ferociously negative: “dismal results” - “dark financial times” – “atrocious” – “bleak” – “the company’s plans proved to be a fantasy” – “astonishingly bad even vs. low expectations” – “we’re questioning Intel’s ability to deliver” –

And as often, the denunciations in the Twitter-verse were most colorful:

Intel as a Crime Scene

Terrible fundamentals, against a backdrop of high expectations; blisteringly negative sentiment; outraged shareholders; business obituaries from “the experts”; lots of detailed dissections of the semiconductor market and the company’s product offerings, supporting generally pessimistic conclusions…

Oddly, however… the share price seemed to stiffen. The stock began to creep sideways, and even to climb back up from the very bottom.

Bottoming & Recovery

And then exactly one year after the dismal/disastrous/ugly earnings release of July 2022, came the July 2023 earnings release – and the surprises were on the upside. Analysts had expected another losing quarter, but the company announced a $1.5 Bn profit, “exceeding the high end of the company’s guidance,” and decisively beating Wall Street’s earnings-per-share estimates. The shares soared 8% the next day.

In short, it began to look like Intel might be gelling into a “value play.”

Before reviewing the case for Intel as a “value” stock, it is important to understand what “value” means.

Value investing focuses on finding and investing in companies that are felt to be currently underpriced, under-valued, by the stock market. Buying under-valued shares then involves waiting for the market to “correct” to the proper value. At least that is how it is generally conceived.

There are various ways to think about “value” investing. Many of them are rather mechanical. They focus on statistical phenomena (“regression to the mean” or “mean reversion” – the tendency of trends to reach a turning point and change direction), or on investor psychology (e.g., “behavioral finance” explanations, citing quirks in human decision-making, like over-reaction to bad news). But the “value” scenario is really about what the company does when it stumbles or finds itself in trouble, and/or what it can do in light of constraints and opportunities in its environment.

In short, I don’t see “value” as a bet on some external force, or some statistical mechanism, that operates on the share price in some impersonal way.

Instead, “value” is what happens when the human beings that are paid to steer the company and fix its problems succeed to some degree in doing so. The possibility/probability of that “success” is what the value investor has to assess.

This implies that a true “value stock” is not really under-valued. It is probably more or less correctly valued, in most cases. (Certainly, looking at the collapse of Intel’s fundamentals in 2022 and early 2023, it would be hard to argue that the true value of the company was not impaired or that the shares were substantially mispriced.)

A “value” company has had a set-back. It needs to respond, with a change of strategy, or focus, or operational correction. It may have been wounded, and will need to heal and recover. When (if) it does reset and recover, its value will increase. The issue is not whether its true value was somehow obscured, or that investors were grossly and collectively mistaken in their exam of that value. It is about whether the company can in fact correct the problem, whether a wounded company can heal, or whether it will be permanently impaired. And whether the broader environment is favorable. Strategy, and environment – the focus on those two questions is what distinguishes a value investor.

A second comment about “value” is that it involves a disconnect between the company’s short-term challenges and its long-term prospects.

The stock market reacts more to the present situation, the breaking news, and the next few months or quarters, especially when the situation is adverse. Most investors discount or ignore the future beyond that horizon.

The classic “value” investment is different: it involves a bet on the long-term.

This has two implications. The first is well-known: a “value” investor must be prepared to wait for the “long-term” to unfold. Benjamin Graham’s original formulation of the “value” thesis cited this delay factor:

More recent research has confirmed that “value” stocks typically undergo the looked-for reversal and recovery after 18-36 months. Some studies have pushed that horizon out even further:

This uncertain delay, waiting for the business correction to develop and for the financial markets to recognize it, is what makes value investing difficult to sustain, both psychologically (fighting the herd instinct to go with “winners” rather than taking a chance on companies in trouble), and pragmatically (for investment managers who need to show performance on a shorter cycle – quarterly or annually).

The second implication of the timing disconnect is more subtle. It bears on the type of “due diligence” that a value investor ought to undertake.

Most investors and many analysts, when they confront a company in trouble, put a lot of effort into getting a clear picture of things as they stand right now. They dive deep into the mass of detail describing the current situation in the company’s operations, its markets, its products, its customers, its technology strengths and weaknesses, its competition. They dissect the company’s earnings releases and study the executives’ phraseology during the earnings calls. They talk to customers, employees and ex-employees, and consult with industry “experts.” They consume vast quantities of “data” from a wide range of sources.

From a “value” perspective, I believe, all this is largely misguided.

For one thing, all of this detail is more or less cast in the present tense (to include the very recent past, a year or so at most). This may be helpful for thinking about the company’s short-term performance over the next quarter or two (which is all that many investors are concerned about). Beyond that, however, it has been shown to be largely useless – especially for troubled companies that are the potential “value plays.” Troubled companies are the ones that are not just cruising along. They are actively responding to their difficulties, adapting and implementing corrections, which will lead to deviations from the prior trend. Even for companies that may not be under such pressure, the value of diving into the complexities of the Here-And-Now is evidently quite limited, at least for purposes of forecasting a company’s future performance. One study of analysts’ estimates of corporate earnings-per-share (the simplest investment metric there is) found that the accuracy of EPS forecasts deteriorates very rapidly. After 12 months they are no more accurate than projections based on a “random walk” time series – a proxy for an un-informed extrapolation of the past trend.

Decaying Accuracy of Analysts' Forecasts

The question for a “value” investor is: What is the situation for this company going to look like in 2 to 5 years? Will the future evolve to favor (or not) the “success” scenario? It is well beyond the horizon of traditional financial models.

The answer won’t emerge from “the details.” It will appear, if at all, in big broad strokes. And it won’t be simple to detect clearly. Details are actually much easier to deal with, because they are concrete and increasingly available and abundant (think Bloomberg). Projecting the Big Picture and its interaction with new company strategies several years out is harder, or at least very different, because it requires a different kind of knowledge, and a very different kind of due diligence. Instead of diving into the briar patch of the company’s present day difficulties, “value” oriented research should focus on the large-scale strategic factors that could create the opportunity for the company to recover from its current difficulties. This has little to do with quarterly operating margins and inventory levels. It is to be found instead in broad industry trends, the evolution of the macro-economy, the study of demographics, social movements, politics, geopolitics, technology trends, a knowledge of government fiscal, monetary and industrial policies… not to speak of history, psychology, art, literature, culture…

Intel offers a good illustration of how this thinking works.

First of all, a basic screen for a low price/earnings ratio flashes “value” – Intel is the most depressed stock in the sector.

Price to Earnings Ratios

[Note: The P/E for Intel in this chart is the long-term average, since at the moment the ratio is technically unavailable because of the losses in the previous quarters.]

At the same time, its 2022 earnings were strong, and, as noted, the latest quarter also showed a profit. In fact, quite a bit more of it than the company’s highflying peers. This is the second facet of a potential “value” signal.

Intel, Nvidia, AMD - Net Income 2022

The “mainstream” approach to investing and the “value” approach both focus on a company’s fundamentals. Both aim to assess the true earning potential of the company’s business by looking at the substantive characteristics of its operations, products, markets, competitors, etc. But they have different views of what is really fundamental, which lead to different approaches to due diligence.

The mainstream model calls for the analyst to get down deep into the weeds. For Intel, analysts study the specifics of “technology nodes,” debating the merits of 7 nanometers vs 5 nanometers etc in chip fabrication, pondering whether and why Intel has “fallen behind” its competitors. They apply esoteric technical benchmarks to compare Intel’s product offerings against AMD’s or Nvidia’s. They agonize over the company’s market share in various segments: servers for data centers, personal computers, mobile devices, artificial intelligence engines… etc. They wrestle with the significance of quarterly shifts in gross margin or operating earnings, “seasonality” and “cyclicality.” They consult all the reports on the latest trend in the semiconductor industry.

For a “value” investor, all this urgent detail is largely irrelevant – because it will all change and evolve, especially in an industry as technologically dynamic and disruption-prone as the chip business. “Value” searches beyond the seasons and cycles and “nodes” to understand the strategic fundamentals over a multi-year horizon.

In the case of Intel, these long-term fundamental trends fall into four categories:

The semiconductor industry is expected to double – or even triple – in revenue in the next decade or so, up to as much as $1.8 Trillion, with a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of over 12% annually – significantly higher than many other tech-heavy industries.

CAGR for Various Tech-Heavy Industries

This is a major acceleration in the long term trend, driven by the intensifying digitalization of just about everything.

First Conclusion: Intel is in the right business.

Semiconductor demand is also broadening significantly. For many years, the chip business was driven by customers in the computer industry. Then smartphones. Now, the applications set is expanding into almost every product category, from kitchen appliances to automobiles. PC’s and smartphones still account for more than half of the demand, but other segments are growing faster – e.g., automotive applications, which are forecast to increase at anywhere from 9-14% CAGR over the next decade (compared to 5-8% CAGR for personal computers and 3-7% CAGR for the smartphone segment).

Semiconductor Demand by Application:Industry

Second Conclusion: The market is becoming more robust, which should dampen the cyclicality risk over time.

The shift away from Chinese markets and suppliers is beginning to take hold. For several reasons, many semiconductor customers are moving to logistically “de-risk” their supply chains. Companies like Apple, Dell, and Hewlett Packard have all announced programs to diversify their supply chains and reduce dependence on China. For many customers, lower risk also means “closer to home.”

Third Conclusion: The trajectory of this process is uncertain, but in general it will tend to favor North-American-centric companies like Intel.

In sum, the market for semiconductors is undergoing a giant secular shift as the world economy digitizes furiously. It is expanding rapidly, it is broadening beyond traditional applications and markets, and it is reorienting away from China in particular and in favor of less risky (and often domestic) sources of supply. All these trends will be favorable for Intel’s opportunity set.

Intel should be well-positioned to capitalize on this great boom, for the following reasons.

Intel, Nvidia, AMD - Revenue 2022

Intel, Nvidia, AMD - Employees 2022

R&D Investment 2022

Cumulative R&D Investment 2013-2022

Rising tides are powerful – and digitalization is a huge economic tide. The simplest summary of Intel’s positioning is this: The semiconductor market will double (or more) in ten years. Intel is the largest American chip company. As the tide rises, Intel will rise with it, likely doubling or tripling its own business. That is the baseline. If Intel is able to rise faster than others, or faster than it has in the recent period, that is an incremental bonus.

Some semiconductor companies currently enjoy “success” that is based on rather narrow foundations. TSMC is a pure foundry, dependent on a few large customers (Apple is almost one quarter of their business). They have no end-user business of their own. Qualcomm generates almost two-thirds of its revenue from China, and almost all of it from wireless applications. It is probably the most vulnerable to geopolitical tensions now developing (see below). Nvidia has grown by leaping from gaming to bitcoin mining and now to generative AI – all a bit opportunistically. The industry is prone to technological disruptions, and shifts in customer needs. Intel has the breadth and scale to play in almost any corner of the exploding semiconductor market, which should lead to less risk and less volatility in the long run.

Political trends will amplify the favorable strategic position of Intel in the coming years. These include

Culture is a powerful intangible factor, for good or ill. It encompasses the psychological and social framework that conditions how a company operates, how it innovates, how decisions are made, how people follow through, individually and collectively.

In the Intel situation, culture comes into the picture at two levels, both of which were touched on in a recent panel discussion with Intel CEO Pat Gelsinger.

WASHINGTON, DC - MARCH 23: CEO of Intel Corporation Pat Gelsinger holds up a semiconductor as he ... [+] testifies during a hearing before Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation at Russell Senate Office Building on Capitol Hill on March 23, 2022 in Washington, DC. The committee held a hearing on “Developing Next Generation Technology for Innovation.” (Photo by Alex Wong/Getty Images)

The style and experience of the executive leadership is critical in a technology company. The current CEO, Pat Gelsinger, represents a return to the hard-core hardware engineering mindset – “I know how to manufacture silicon at scale” – of the company’s founders. After a string of CEO’s who perhaps didn’t fit that mold, many observers see Gelsinger as the right person to recoup the corporate culture of success.

Portrait of Andy Grove, from Intel, at the annual PC Forum, Tucson, Arizona, March 10-13, 1991. ... [+] (Photo by Ann E. Yow-Dyson/Getty Images)

In the same interview, Gelsinger also expressed his confidence in the national culture of innovation in the U.S. which has formed the context for Intel’s growth from the beginning.

Feel free to take issue with this, if you wish. Still, in my personal experience, culture counts – a lot. Especially where it involves creative technological innovation. I would place it near the top of the list of the strategic factors that will condition Intel’s prospects for making the “value” turnaround.

Intel is the largest company in the industry, dominant over decades through many technological transitions, with by far the heaviest and most consistent tradition of investment across the broadest spectrum of key technology categories. The company is already in position to ride the enormous wave of digitalization in the economy which will double or triple the entire semiconductor market in the next decade or so. Intel now has (I think) the leadership, and the strategy to reclaim the pre-eminent position it enjoyed for several decades. It invented the industry and it can reinvent itself.

The company also stands to benefit from favorable political trends and economic subsidies in the U.S. and Europe. There is a new bipartisan commitment to “industrial policy” in the U.S. which will channel naturally to support Intel’s position as the “national champion” in the strategic semiconductor industry. Geopolitical tensions will force semiconductor companies and their customers to diversify away from both China and Taiwan. Intel’s new initiative in the foundry business should draw business from fabless IC companies concerned about that risk.

Timing the turn in a “value play” is always difficult, and as if to underscore the need for patience, Intel’s shares quickly gave back the gains from last month’s surprise good news.

Still, as of yesterday (August 8, 2023), Intel had gained 35% since last October – and that occurred even in the face of a strong cyclical downturn throughout the entire semiconductor industry. And since the beginning of June, Intel is up 13.0% - edging out Nvidia (up 12.3%), doubling the S&P 500 (up 6.3%), and soundly beating Qualcomm (up 0.7%), Texas Instruments (down 4.2%), TSMC (down 4.7%), AMD (down 5.5%), and ASML (down 7.1%).

Perhaps the “value” genie is finally stirring?

For further memorizing on the CHIPS Act: