RBC Capital analyst Amit Daryanani kept his Outperform rating and $210 price target on Apple after conducting a survey of its Services business, concluding that it is a "crucial but underappreciated piece" of its investment story that's also a "major driver" of its gross margins. With 15% of the overall revenues, the analyst contends that Services will likely sustain a 20% annualized rate of growth by 2020 to become a $50B business. The survey showed that its AppleMusic offering was the top music streaming app for iPhone uses, closely followed by Spotify, and if given the option of free service, 50% of the users who don't use the app would consider switching. Daryanani further notes that only about 12% of the iPhone users have or plan to purchase AirPod, and that number will rise as more users upgrade beyond the iPhone 6/6s, while the number of users buying an AppleWatch should also rise from the current 13% of survey responders.

Apple saw sales of its iPhones fall 19.1% in the first three months of the year, CNBC's Ryan Browne reports, citing data from Counterpoint Research. Meanwhile, Huawei saw a 69.7% surge in smartphone sales in the country during the same period, Counterpoint said. Reference Link

Welcome to "Fly Insider," The Fly's weekly recap of notable insider stock transactionsNOTABLE INSIDER PURCHASES: Significant insider purchases reported in the prior week from April 15 through April 19 include:Chairman of Ashford (AINC) Montgomery Bennett purchased 200,000 shares of company stock at $4. 91 per share... To see the rest of the story go to thefly.com. See Story Here

Apple quietly acquired Paris-based AI startup Datakalab on December 17, Challenges' David Pargamin reports. The terms of the transaction could not be learned, but European Commission has been notified of the deal, the author notes. Reference Link

Friday's total option volume of 56.7 million contracts resulted in net open interest growth of 6.01 million calls and 5.28 million puts. NVIDIA (NVDA), Tesla (TSLA), Apple (AAPL) and Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) saw the greatest growth. Top five new positions opened include 50k Lyft (LYFT) May-24 20 calls, 44k Energy Transfer (ET) 4/26 weekly 16.5 calls, 43k Las Vegas Sands (LVS) Sep-24 41 calls, 23k Tesla (TSLA) 4/26 weekly 162.5 calls and 21k Papa John's (PZZA) Jun-24 57.5 puts.