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One reason why profits are so high:

Apple products are produced under almost slave-labor conditions. Nets have to be hung underneath the windows of Fox-Conn workers, as their living conditions are so bad that so many of them killed themselves. And those were Chinese workers who were not used to anything close to US work conditions.

Foxconn's major customers:

Acer Inc. (Taiwan)
Amazon.com (United States)
Amazon (United States)
ASRock (Taiwan)
Asus (Taiwan)
Barnes & Noble (United States)
Cisco (United States)
Dell (United States)
EVGA Corporation (United States)
Hewlett-Packard (United States)
Intel (United States)
IBM (United States)
Lenovo (China)
Logitech (Switzerland)
Microsoft (United States)
MSI (Taiwan)
Motorola (United States)
Netgear (United States)
Nintendo (Japan)
Nokia (Finland)
Panasonic (Japan)
Philips (Netherlands)
Samsung (South Korea)
Sharp (Japan)
Sony Ericsson (Japan/Sweden)
Toshiba (Japan)
Vizio (United States)


And that's just Foxconn. Then there all the other companies in China and Taiwan that do the same thing. One can only imagine who else their customers are.

If you're posting your righteous complaints from virtually *any* modern computing device, you're contributing to the problem.

Congratulations.


So, I'd like to see a little bit more reflection here instead of the brainless adoration of quarterly results.

You first. Deal?
 
How is it more? I'm always hearing about them having an $80 Billion war chest, %80 Billion + $13 Billion = $93 billion, right?

Wrong

In addition to their cash / cash equivalents, Apple's "value" encompasses buildings, property, equipment, patents, intellectual property, retail distribution, etc.
 
Foxconn's major customers:

Acer Inc. (Taiwan)
Amazon.com (United States)
Amazon (United States)
ASRock (Taiwan)
Asus (Taiwan)
Barnes & Noble (United States)
Cisco (United States)
Dell (United States)
EVGA Corporation (United States)
Hewlett-Packard (United States)
Intel (United States)
IBM (United States)
Lenovo (China)
Logitech (Switzerland)
Microsoft (United States)
MSI (Taiwan)
Motorola (United States)
Netgear (United States)
Nintendo (Japan)
Nokia (Finland)
Panasonic (Japan)
Philips (Netherlands)
Samsung (South Korea)
Sharp (Japan)
Sony Ericsson (Japan/Sweden)
Toshiba (Japan)
Vizio (United States)


And that's just Foxconn. Then there all the other companies in China and Taiwan that do the same thing. One can only imagine who else their customers are.

If you're posting your righteous complaints from virtually *any* modern computing device, you're contributing to the problem.

Congratulations.




You first. Deal?

Once again you missed HIS POINT.

Cheering profits.. which is what I always try to wrap my head around. Unless I am a stockholder, why the hell would I care?

Sure those companies listed use Chinese labor, but I am not on amazon.com forums cheering their profits either.
 
Once again you missed HIS POINT.

Cheering profits.. which is what I always try to wrap my head around. Unless I am a stockholder, why the hell would I care?

Sure those companies listed use Chinese labor, but I am not on amazon.com forums cheering their profits either.

Wrong, you're creating HIS point for him. His post was about slave labor and reflection and all the injustices in the world, not about cheering profits.
 
Wow. It's hard to put in to words what it's like to see Apple sell 5 million Macs a quarter. About 10 years ago, they would sell maybe 250k a quarter. Even 5 years ago those numbers were closer to 1 - 2 million. It's only in the last couple years that Mac sales have taken off so much.

Also astounding is how many iDevices are out there. iOS and mobile are the "future"– this is obvious– and Apple is way ahead of competitors.

Maybe it's time to re-buy some Apple shares. I had a 10-bagger the last time I was in. Doesn't look like I'll ever see that kind of growth again, but I don't see why Apple couldn't continue to grow as they expand into the global marketplace.
 
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dgree03 said:
Foxconn's major customers:

Acer Inc. (Taiwan)
Amazon.com (United States)
Amazon (United States)
ASRock (Taiwan)
Asus (Taiwan)
Barnes & Noble (United States)
Cisco (United States)
Dell (United States)
EVGA Corporation (United States)
Hewlett-Packard (United States)
Intel (United States)
IBM (United States)
Lenovo (China)
Logitech (Switzerland)
Microsoft (United States)
MSI (Taiwan)
Motorola (United States)
Netgear (United States)
Nintendo (Japan)
Nokia (Finland)
Panasonic (Japan)
Philips (Netherlands)
Samsung (South Korea)
Sharp (Japan)
Sony Ericsson (Japan/Sweden)
Toshiba (Japan)
Vizio (United States)


And that's just Foxconn. Then there all the other companies in China and Taiwan that do the same thing. One can only imagine who else their customers are.

If you're posting your righteous complaints from virtually *any* modern computing device, you're contributing to the problem.

Congratulations.




You first. Deal?

Once again you missed HIS POINT.

Cheering profits.. which is what I always try to wrap my head around. Unless I am a stockholder, why the hell would I care?

Sure those companies listed use Chinese labor, but I am not on amazon.com forums cheering their profits either.

If you're not a shareholder, you shouldn't care. But most people here are shareholders. You are free to exit the thread since you don't care about it.
 
Wrong, you're creating HIS point for him. His post was about slave labor and reflection and all the injustices in the world, not about cheering profits.

It was a 2 part post, on one hand cheering profits on the other hand forgetting in that process that they have slave labor conditions.

You are right, I do think he over arching point was slave labor.

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If you're not a shareholder, you shouldn't care. But most people here are shareholders. You are free to exit the thread since you don't care about it.

MOST people huh? :rolleyes:
 
This results are absolutely incredible. Revenue 25 % above guidance, profit almost 50% above guidance. What the hell is going on in Cupertino? Stellar, just stellar. And they did brake through the 300 mio iOS device barrier too. :cool:

Agreed! This is just min-blowing performance. People have become used to Apple's stingy guidance and analysts know it. So they always give their numbers the Apple Bump. But these results bump the Apple bump. That's really nuts. Granted, they had an extra week of high-profit to add into this quarter's earnings, but that doesn't make up for all the gap.

Kudos Apple. The story here, for Apple enthusiasts, is that our company is wildly popular and growing as big and as fast as a startup.

I, for one, have noticed a lot of iPads in executive meetings in the past 6 months. If they didn't bring their MacBook Pro (creatives like me) or MacBook Air (business / marketing / pm's) they have an iPad. Almost all the iPads were for executives who don't need to necessarily do content creation. They just need to take notes, pull up documents for viewing, or present ideas. It's perfect for that! 10 hour battery. Doesn't get hot. It weighs 1.x pounds. Apple has a greta form factor in the iPad.

I also see iPhones getting into more and more stodgy IT cultures. Companies that used to only allow Blackberries are being pressured by top executives to make it happen.

So Apple is not only doing well with consumers, but it seems to be making huge inroads (in my personal view) with large companies and executives.
 
Impressive quarter: Thanks Apple!

The quarterly results reported yesterday are highly impressive! Significant beat on iPhone, iPad and Mac: Surpassing each by far the most optimistic expectations.

Analyst Andy Zaky was right calling this the "mother of all earnings blow-outs": That is exactly what we saw yesterday! Beating by approx. 5 billion turnover and 3 Dollars on EPS: Congrats!

Thanks Apple!
 
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dgree03 said:
Wrong, you're creating HIS point for him. His post was about slave labor and reflection and all the injustices in the world, not about cheering profits.

It was a 2 part post, on one hand cheering profits on the other hand forgetting in that process that they have slave labor conditions.

You are right, I do think he over arching point was slave labor.

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If you're not a shareholder, you shouldn't care. But most people here are shareholders. You are free to exit the thread since you don't care about it.

MOST people huh? :rolleyes:

Yes, most people who have posted on this thread are shareholders.

Do you own any mutual funds?
 
Yes, most people who have posted on this thread are shareholders.

Do you own any mutual funds?

:)

American Funds Growth Fund of America Class R6 (RGAGX)
Top Ten Holdings
as of 12/31/2011
Apple, Inc.
Home Depot, Inc.
Amazon.com Inc
Philip Morris International, Inc.
Oracle Corporation
Comcast Corp A
Union Pacific Corp
Gilead Sciences Inc
Microsoft Corporation
Allergan, Inc.
18.30% of the portfolio
 
:)

American Funds Growth Fund of America Class R6 (RGAGX)
Top Ten Holdings
as of 12/31/2011
Apple, Inc.

Exactly.

When people bemoan "Wall Street" and the institutional holdings of a company, they're complaining about their mutual funds.
 
The stock price is up over $25 today.

The dumb money who posts on a lot of these threads would say that it's plunging today. After all last night it was at $455, and now it's way down to $445. But those are dumb people who will always be buffeted by the market, rather than controlling their own fate.
 
iPhone's revenue bigger than all of Microsoft's

http://www.neowin.net/forum/topic/1...microsoft/page__pid__594607077#entry594607077

iPhone generated $24.42 billion revenue. During the same quarter, all of Microsoft: $20.89 billion. Apple revenue $46.33 billion was more than twice Microsoft's, and so was the net income $13.06 billion versus $6.62 billion.

http://betanews.com/2012/01/24/apple-q1-2012-by-the-numbers-13b-profit-37m-iphones-sold/

http://betanews.com/2012/01/19/microsoft-q2-2012-by-the-numbers-windows-revenue-falls-6/
 
Maybe it's time to re-buy some Apple shares.

Time to sell, and find the next Apple. Think in terms of the global market for these devices. It is a mathematical hurdle to keep generating double digit growth as you dominate the pool for those devices, shrinking your available pool of market and revenue that you don't already have.

A friend of mine was lamenting that I'd told him Apple was at the time overpriced, and he sold his shares. But why should he complain? He made a decent profit. Since then, though, he wouldn't have actually done much better than the S&P Index, and truth be told I've generated higher returns finding undervalued companies.

Right now the world's eyes are on Apple so there's tremendously more downside risk than upside, unless the market stumbles and temporarily underprices Apple below their intrinsic value in which case that would be a potential buy signal. But they're north of that boundary by at least $75 a share.

"Be greedy when others are fearful and fearful when others are greedy." - Warren Buffett
 
Cheering profits.. which is what I always try to wrap my head around. Unless I am a stockholder, why the hell would I care?

Because you probably live in a free country where such profits are possible to legal business enterprises, and not someplace where not only are corporations oppressed, but so are the people. If you think stockholders somehow have an advantage, you probably also live some place where you are free to join them by buying AAPL stock. If you don't like such advantages, you could always try moving some place which doesn't have them (North Korea likely does not have any massively profitable non-government corporate entities).

You should also be glad that companies exist that can design such great products that large numbers of people willingly spend that much money to acquire those products, over and above the other more boring stuff. How boring the world would be if you could only buy generic Dells and Nokias. Or Lada's.
 
Because you probably live in a free country where such profits are possible to legal business enterprises, and not someplace where not only are corporations oppressed, but so are the people. If you think stockholders somehow have an advantage, you probably also live some place where you are free to join them by buying AAPL stock. If you don't like such advantages, you could always try moving some place which doesn't have them (North Korea likely does not have any massively profitable non-government corporate entities).

You should also be glad that companies exist that can design such great products that large numbers of people willingly spend that much money to acquire those products, over and above the other more boring stuff. How boring the world would be if you could only buy generic Dells and Nokias. Or Lada's.

Nice rant, but this is not a response to my post.
 
Yes, most people who have posted on this thread are shareholders.

Or, if not, possibly their parents or other older relatives are (contained within funds held by their 401K, IRA and other retirement holding). The value in these retirement funds represents upgrades in food and lifestyle choices later in life for these people.

(...especially given that the national government retirement programs in several countries are nearing bankruptcy.)
 
To be honest, I think the point people seem to be missing is that while there's a huge profit margin, it's not the full story. MacBram said it pretty well, but I'm not sure it really took hold for some people.

It takes money to make money. That 42% profit margin doesn't appear (either that or I'm reading it wrong) to include the amount spent on developing the product line in the first place. Given that the technology used in the iPhone/iPad was in research/development since at least 2001, that's at least 6 years of engineers they had to pay for before the first iPhone shipped. How do you pay for that? Using cash saved up.

(just taking a ballpark guess. 1000 engineers at $120k/year for 6 years would be $7 billion. That'd be half of this quarter already and wouldn't include the years between the original iphone and the 4S. Salaries arn't cheap.)

How do you pay for developing the next iPhone? Using part of the profit margin. What's the rest of that for? To recoup the costs of those first 6 years and to grow that cash reserve.

Now, yeah, I think their cash reserve is freakin' ridiculous. But it does lend them flexibility. If they seriously needed to buy somebody out, they could. If something seriously went wrong and needed to recall 37 million iPhones to make their customers happy, they could without endangering themselves.
If they need to buy out the world's supply of high-DPI LCDs at top dollar for their Macs, they could. They've already demonstrated investing in other companies' manufacturing lines (capacitive touch screens) or investing in new manufacturing tech (shaping glass). All this comes from the cash reserve.

At the least, it also lends them and the US market stability. If there's a company that's doing well, and is purchasing tons of parts from other US companies (hi Broadcom, Marvell, Atheros), and obviously has the cash to pay for it, it means higher confidence in those smaller companies as well because you know their income source is stable too.

Yeah, Apple is for profit. And does have responsibility to shareholders. But at the same time, it's not like there is no benefit to having the large cash reserve. And those who are simply looking at the profit arn't taking into consideration the amount of money spent to get that profit in the first place.

In the end, a 10% price cut across a product line has a possibility of making the product line a money loser despite quarterly profits. Selling a product at cost pretty much guarantees a loss.

I understand (also referring to LTD) that they have a responsibility to shareholders to maximize profits. I am just asking a simple yes or no question.
I just cannot understand how people can curse some companies for making high profits (oil companies) yet praise others.

LTD, I was simply saying that the money that goes to Apple is doing almost nothing for the US economy, half of it is out of country and the rest sits in banks. If some of the money was being spent at small businesses would that be better? (I'm just saying that the money that apple makes does very little for the economy--at least for the moment)

Question: Would you prefer if Apple charged 10% less and made only a 20% instead of a 30% profit margin.

In your opinion, yes or no.

As for an oil company versus Apple in terms of profit margins, I'm willing to guess that it took less investment to figure out how to refine oil than it did to figure out how to make the iPhone. Therefore, I feel it should be right that profit from refining oil should be less than profit from selling an iPhone, percentage-wise.

But, as for whether or not I feel it should be a 20%, 30%, 40%, or whatever. I have no opinion because I don't know how long it takes to break even (if possible) on that kind of margin. If it takes more money to make what I feel is a better product, so be it. If you're just gouging because you can, obviously I'm not happy with that. But the fact is, we won't know because we don't have all the numbers.
 
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Question: Would you prefer if Apple charged 10% less and made only a 20% instead of a 30% profit margin.

Would your employer prefer if you asked for 10% less in salary, and put that much less in your savings account? Sure. Are you going to do that? No. Should I care that you don't do that. Also no. I know you're not a charity.

Why should I treat Apple any differently? (And if I could and did ask something different of Apple, it would be for a bonus free Ferrari or the like, not some measly 10% discount).
 
Would your employer prefer if you asked for 10% less in salary, and put that much less in your savings account? Sure. Are you going to do that? No. Should I care that you don't do that. Also no. I know you're not a charity.

Why should I treat Apple any differently? (And if I could and did ask something different of Apple, it would be for a bonus free Ferrari or the like, not some measly 10% discount).

Every human I have ever met in life prefers to pay less for a product. Except Apple customers. They like to pay more and get some sense of personal satisfaction from the fact that Apple makes more money than any other company. These are the very same people who cry when their cell bill goes up $5 month and accuse the provider of gouging them.
 
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