This was a relatively quiet week for both the Fab Five ($147 billion or 0.84% loss) and the Telco Top Five ($16 billion or 2.51% loss). Some profit taking on Apple and Meta occurred and the other three Fab Five stocks were basically unchanged. Four of the Telco Top Five were down this week while Charter was unchanged.
Last week, thousands gathered for the SCTE Expo 2026. Jeff Baumgartner, a friend of the Brief and Senior Editor of Light Reading, has a very good summary of one of the keynote panels (here). It featured senior technical executives from Google, Comcast, Charter and CableLabs. Great discussion on AI’s ability to filter and group tens of thousands of messages and correlate similar signals from different field gear manufacturers into actionable patterns.
Counterpoint Research was out with a projection (Bloomberg article here) that the upcoming Apple Duo will sell six million units in 2026. This represents approximately 7-8% of the total devices the Cupertino global giant will sell through Q1 2027. We will publish our latest view of iPhone 18 backlog tomorrow, but the upgrade cycle (from iPhone 17 Pro Max to iPhone Duo) appears to be alive and well while sales of the iPhone 18 Pro Max are relatively robust.
On the macroeconomic front, we had a jobs report Friday that allayed fears the Fed would be forced to raise interest rates at their next meeting (release here). Job growth was anemic and there were 60,000 fewer jobs than previously reported in September and August (downward revisions). We found this Household Data table (A-8) to be particularly interesting – it shows job growth by class of worker:
We find it interesting that (using non-seasonally adjusted data) that Nonagricultural employment decreased by 883K (0.55%) over the last year and that 50% of that loss is attributed to government (1.94% decrease). As we have seen in the state-by-state data, this employment loss is focused on two states (Virginia, Maryland) and the District of Columbia (more here). Excluding government, the loss is 139.1 million to 138.6 million or 0.36%.
There is additional information from this report that we will share in next week’s full Brief, but suffice it to say the economy is at full employment, and higher wages, especially in the construction and manufacturing sectors, are certain to appear by the beginning of 2027.
Full file is below. Have a great remainder of the weekend!
