I also doubt we'll see a big acquisition. They could certainly partner with Visa and/or Mastercard and/or AXP for a payment system, though. They don't need to run the pipes, just own the important IP over it that makes the experience better and more secure for customers. It's not like Visa will ever own the smartphone hardware, so the best they can do is partner with someone like Apple and make that a differentiator against Mastercard (or vice versa). Apple strongly dislikes being dependent on other companies, but here they could play one against the other and switch if there are problems, and anti-trust will never allow that industry to consolidate.
Sales were a bit slow in the US, and while we'll never know, things might have been different if they hadn't screwed up the product mix between the 5c and 5s and supply had been less constrained during the quarter (can't blame them, it's basically guesswork when you do something new). That in itself is not a bad problem to have; you launch something cheaper, but your customers overwhelmingly go for your flagship product... But it's obvious the high-end US market is starting to saturate for everybody.
Same with the carrier contract thing. It seems like it's just delaying sales, rather than losing them. This approach by carriers doesn't give an advantage to Android, and we know that iPhone customers are very sticky to the brand and that more android users switch to iphone than vice versa, so it's basically just making their business a bit less seasonal (buy when contract expires rather than whenever Apple launches a new phone).
The growth rates in international markets were all pretty impressive, and China should do well too, though it'll ramp up over the year as China Mobile's 4G network rolls out to more cities (only in a few right now).
iPhone 6 launch will be particularly interesting because more of China will be ready from day 1, and it should be a much more visible change to go from 5s to 6 than from 5 to 5s. All else being equal, the "S" years are probably always a harder sale to people who don't really understand the internal changes...
A few more random thoughts:
Television content is moving in the direction of unbundling. That's good for Apple, because if the content owners can't force big expensive bundles on their customers anymore (because of competition from netflix and other over the top stuff), then it doesn't make much difference for them to monetize their content through Comcast or Apple TV/iTunes.
I think new category products, whatever they are, should be looked at as both individual new businesses and as part of the Apple ecosystem. So if they launch a cool new wearable device, or a new uber-AppleTV that has storage, a great GPU, a game controller, a bunch of content, and some innovative UI, it'll bring money in on its own if successful, but it'll also make iPhones and iPads and Macs stickier to existing customers and more attractive to new ones because it's all going to integrate together tightly. Same with iOS in the car.
So if I'm a iPhone owner and buy the cool new wearable or AppleTV, I'm less likely to switch to Android in the future because I'd lose functionality with these other cool things. And if I'm an Android user and see Apple launch this cool new thing and I want it, I'm more likely to consider also getting an iPhone/iPad next time I upgrade so that I can get the most out of the ecosystem. It's the same as how iPods sold a lot of Macs, and iPhones sold iPads and Macs...
In other words, a new category doesn't have to be as big as the iPhone to move the needle (I don't think anything will be as big as that), but as long as it's pretty big and shoves people in the direction of the iPhone and iPad and Mac, and iTunes and the App store, it could make a big difference.
I agree that a big dutch tender would be a good way to go, especially if they are as confidant as they say they are in their new product pipeline. Doing it before those are out would probably be best.
