In recent weeks, you may have heard or read that Apple sales of iPhone were down in the quarter and Carl Icahn sold his stake in the company, do you have reasons to worry? Apple has been a darling of the markets for many years and has changed mobile phones forever. It is still worth owning? Chis Umiastowski’s column  Apple shines as a long-term growth story is worth considering.

If you have an Apple product and many people do whether it is iPhone, Mac, iPad,  you may have Apple Music because it offers 30 million songs. Apple starts the subscription for free for the person to experiment and listen and soon they are paying for it because the access is great and there is always another song to listen to. To put all this into perspective, there are over 1 billion people in the globe with active Apple devices; 13 million are paying subscription fees to Apple Music (do you think it will rise?) Apple has $ 153 billion in net cash and it grows everyday. Apple has added services such as iCloud to back up devices in the cloud. With all these possibilities do you think Apple can add even more potential subscription services?

Mr. Umiastowski writes Apple’s service business adds a new layer of revenue. But it also creates even more sticky customers. It’s becoming harder to leave the Apple ecosystem. This makes it easier for Apple to command higher prices which result in shareholder-pleasing gross margin levels. Apple should be able to leverage in enormous installed base.

Linking to dividend paying stocks, as consumers we want the best deal; as investors you want consumers to see value in paying more to the company for its goods and services. As long as Apple customers believe Apple is worth the extra money, the ability to leverage more services at higher gross margins means that the $153 billion can change to $200 billion and everyone smiles at the bank.

There are more questions than answers, till the next time – to raising questions.