Apple Reports Q2 2013 Quarterly Results: $9.5 Billion Profit on $43.6 Billion in Revenue, Increases Dividend and Share Repurchases

Dmunjal said:

I don't advocate buying Disney except in a desperation move. As the largest shareholder, Jobs would have gotten it done by now. Cook doesn't have his will.

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Cook doesn't have Steve's piece of Disney, but that's entirely beside the point. It would be a terrible move, and if it was done for the purpose of supporting the stock price, you can forget about that. The markets would be horrified, and for good reason.

lildimsum7 said:

That's an incredibly naive assumption. Why the hell would it take more R&D to figure out how to make a phone bigger or how to make a new Mac Pro? Your logic makes absolutely no sense! And what do you think all the OS updates have been about? Realizing ideas takes time! Do you have any idea what they're doing with R&D? Nope! What they've been spending on R&D provides more than enough resources to do their job. Projects take a lot of time, not a lot of money!

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I'm not being naive. I work in a high tech corporate environment and it costs money to develop new products. That money goes into R&D to bring it to market.

The fact that it was a conscious business decision not to do it doesn't mean that they could have done it with more R&D spending. They chose to save it instead.

IJ Reilly said:

Cook doesn't have Steve's piece of Disney, but that's entirely beside the point. It would be a terrible move, and if it was done for the purpose of supporting the stock price, you can forget about that. The markets would be horrified, and for good reason.

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Partnering, not buying Disney, would have helped get iTV off the ground. Just like partnering with AT&T got the iPhone off the ground. This was never about the stock price.

LagunaSol said:

I wish Tim had stuck with the usual "We don't comment on upcoming products" line. His implication that nothing was coming until fall was damaging in the short-term. Even if there wasn't anything due until fall, he didn't have to come right out and imply that.

Perhaps we can hope it was a feint to throw competitors off. Or I'll be spending a long, hot summer waiting for my AAPL to rebound.

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Its actually a great business answer.
He knows that there is pent demand for Apple products so if he announces that new versions comes soon, no one would buy current stocked products. So anyone who wants Apple products better buy now.
And this means that no new version of iPhone, Macs, iPads and whatever will actually come before fall or September. Which is great for current sales. Very shrewd.

StoneJack said:

Its actually a great business answer.
He knows that there is pent demand for Apple products so if he announces that new versions comes soon, no one would buy current stocked products. So anyone who wants Apple products better buy now.
And this means that no new version of iPhone, Macs, iPads and whatever will actually come before fall or September. Which is great for current sales. Very shrewd.

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Maybe he should just wait until 2014 to release new products then!

Dmunjal said:

Maybe he should just wait until 2014 to release new products then!

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Yes, its possible. Of course, we know that before Christmas Apple will release new versions of their electronics and computers, but not before fall, so if you want to buy Apple products, you buy and don't have to wait until Fall. Its just 4 months left.

And thats what exactly has been communicated. If you are not happy with that, you can wait until Fall to buy new versions.

Another read: Apple may release new versions of software in summer and that's what I am thinking of. Makes perfect sense as simultaneous software and hardware will put too much strain. So software in summer, two months from now, hardware in 4 months.

Dmunjal said:

Partnering, not buying Disney, would have helped get iTV off the ground. Just like partnering with AT&T got the iPhone off the ground. This was never about the stock price.

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Okay, now I am confused by what you are saying. Earlier you were talking about Apple buying Disney. Partnerships are an entirely different deal, though even those can create difficult entanglements. It's way too soon to say that the TV project (assuming it is real) hasn't made progress on the content front, but it is also worth pointing out that the TV business is far, far more complicated than the mobile phone business, and it's a total hairball. Content alone is not the issue.

IJ Reilly said:

Okay, now I am confused by what you are saying. Earlier you were talking about Apple buying Disney. Partnerships are an entirely different deal, though even those can create difficult entanglements. It's way too soon to say that the TV project (assuming it is real) hasn't made progress on the content front, but it is also worth pointing out that the TV business is far, far more complicated than the mobile phone business, and it's a total hairball. Content alone is not the issue.

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I should be more clear. I believe technology is not holding back iTV but lack of content under terms that are attractive to Apple and its customers.

That content has to come from studios who are hesitant to follow the same path as the music studios did.

Being the largest shareholder of Disney allowed Jobs to influence the company more than otherwise. Without that partnership, an outright acquisition might make sense to jump start the platform and show what could be done. Yes, it would upset the other studios but the other option is status quo and let other smaller players build a competitive platform.

Dmunjal said:

I should be more clear. I believe technology is not holding back iTV but lack of content under terms that are attractive to Apple and its customers.

That content has to come from studios who are hesitant to follow the same path as the music studios did.

Being the largest shareholder of Disney allowed Jobs to influence the company more than otherwise. Without that partnership, an outright acquisition might make sense to jump start the platform and show what could be done. Yes, it would upset the other studios but the other option is status quo and let other smaller players build a competitive platform.

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Ding, Ding, Ding. We have a winner in this post!

Dmunjal said:

I should be more clear. I believe technology is not holding back iTV but lack of content under terms that are attractive to Apple and its customers.

That content has to come from studios who are hesitant to follow the same path as the music studios did.

Being the largest shareholder of Disney allowed Jobs to influence the company more than otherwise. Without that partnership, an outright acquisition might make sense to jump start the platform and show what could be done. Yes, it would upset the other studios but the other option is status quo and let other smaller players build a competitive platform.

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An acquisition would far more than upset them, it would automatically make everyone else Apple's competitors and natural non-partners from word go. Apple would be distributing Disney product, and very likely nothing else. And that works how, exactly?

Of course it's more about content than technology, but the content issue is extremely complicated in TV, far more so than it was in music. And to repeat, if Apple had gone the route you suggest in music, the chances that the iTunes store later carries competitor's product is almost nothing. You will notice that they did not do what you suggest for music. Any alternative theories as to why?

Maybe you just don't understand why I'm saying that TV is far complicated than music. Not sure.

IJ Reilly said:

An acquisition would far more than upset them, it would automatically make everyone else Apple's competitors and natural non-partners from word go. Apple would be distributing Disney product, and very likely nothing else. And that works how, exactly?

Of course it's more about content than technology, but the content issue is extremely complicated in TV, far more so than it was in music. And to repeat, if Apple had gone the route you suggest in music, the chances that the iTunes store later carries competitor's product is almost nothing. You will notice that they did not do what you suggest for music. Any alternative theories as to why?

Maybe you just don't understand why I'm saying that TV is far complicated than music. Not sure.

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I get that it is a lot more complicated. But you can't stand still either. Do you agree that Jobs would have gotten a partnership done by now? Maybe Apple needs to enlist Laurene?

Dmunjal said:

I get that it is a lot more complicated. But you can't stand still either. Do you agree that Jobs would have gotten a partnership done by now? Maybe Apple needs to enlist Laurene?

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I don't imagine Steve would have made this happen any sooner. In fact I suspect Tim Cook might have a better shot at getting it done. Steve's huge Disney holding was a conflict of interest. At least that's how Disney's competitors would have to view it.

They aren't standing still, of that you can be certain. Some huge hurdles must be jumped. Making sense of the live sports mess is massive heavy lifting all by itself. A lot of those media rights are owned by the cable companies and even if you could seduce them into licensing their rights, then you'd have to amend their contracts with the sports franchises. Probably over 100 of them in the "big four" sports in the U.S. alone. So I don't see how that gets done at all, and without sports, you can have all the rest of the programming in the world, and you still have nothing.