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Apple Reports Results for Q3 2012: $8.8 Billion Profit on $35 Billion in Revenue
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I don't need two phones a year. But the fact is that Apple is losing market share and more importantly mindshare as the leader in the smartphone race. Competitors are adding features (bigger screen, LTE, NFC, etc.) faster than Apple and that is affecting how quickly Apple can grow.
Do you think if Apple launched a larger iPhone six months after the launch of the 4S with a larger screen and LTE, that they would have sold only 26M phones this quarter?
Apple does have the capacity to do this but they seem to have chosen a more conservative approach that maximizes profit and ROI as opposed to risking capital on new designs.
The original iPhone was a huge risk and I'd like to see them take more risks now that it has been 5 years.
One of my favorite quotes from Steve Jobs: "If you don't cannibalize yourself, someone else will."
Sitting in short-term marketable investments is a conservative approach. Why not put the capital to work as R&D? How can Samsung come out with three world-class phones (Gnex, S3, Note 2) in a span of 12 months while Apple can only put out one that looks just like the model before?
Samsung releases many phones a year but only three of them (S3, Note, Nexus) are high end.
What Apple does is let Microsoft & Samsung spends the really big bucks on R&D, wait for the patent then copy them really quick and put out products faster.
I still believe they are spread to thin with the iPhone release cycle. The Holiday quarter would have been good anyway. With the iPhone in the summer, they had a mid year boost. Now they are going to have 2 quarters of blah every year. Something will have to give at some point.
It is all a game. A game they have to play. Apple is doing great and growing well. I don't want to see them simply playing to the market, but they should at least consider it every now and again. I tend not to look at quarterly results, but these get so much hype they are hard to ignore.
Well, the trend has begun... I see this to be a rolling downward hill, especially since they don't have leadership that remotely reminds us of Steve Jobs.
I know, people are tired of hearing that. Apple has a master that is too focused on making efficiencies within the company as opposed to discovering the next big thing. I hope Tim Cook realizes this and becomes what he is good at, a wall shelf.
Valid points from you and knightwrx. My whole thing is, I'm attributing this slow growth to the "old" 4s. Wall Street had bullish expectations which weren't met but if you examine why they weren't met you may find its not as bad as you think.
IPhone grew 20% year over year when the latest iteration is eight months old. There are undoubtedly ppl waiting on the next one.
Apple will be late to the LTE party but when the LTE iPhone is released and if it has a bigger screen (though not a requirement for success) it will easily destroy any previous record.
If I ran a company that experienced 20% growth with an old device and still made billions in profit I wouldn't get caught up in the wall street crap. I own aapl stock and this will NOT be the reason I start selling off. AAPL will be at 900+ if not more by next year.
Incidentally when apple sold 40 million 4s's at launch ppl said it was no surprise and still gave them no credit lol. Now when they're still selling 26million eight months later ppl say they're declining. Go figure
I agree they should not get caught up in it. It has little to do with the health of the company or even the investment quality. Maybe they could spread things around a bit to make the street happy, but that really does not impact if Apple is a good investment or not.
Well, the trend has begun... I see this to be a rolling downward hill, especially since they don't have leadership that remotely reminds us of Steve Jobs.
I know, people are tired of hearing that. Apple has a master that is too focused on making efficiencies within the company as opposed to discovering the next big thing. I hope Tim Cook realizes this and becomes what he is good at, a wall shelf.
steve jobs is the cause of all this. every product being sold now is his baby.
SJ was always the one for one product. just like henry ford and the model t that only came in black
love apple products, but always hated SJ. i think he was over rated, took credit for a lot of things others did and was only good with a narrow product line and refused to change. works in some market cycles, but not now
It may have done poorly at launch, but that was in Q2 FY 2011, it got up to speed in Q3 FY 2011. Also, don't underestimate the iphone white. Plus, it's not just USA.
It did boost it, but they were also coming from a lower base because the 'main' launch was not in Q1 FY 2011 but Q4 FY 2010.
Q3 FY 2011 was better than both Q1 and Q2, and then only Q4 was lower at 17 million.
In fact, the quarter that they are comparing yesterdays results to is the quarter that had a 142 percent growth YoY. That's even more than the all time record Q1 FY 2012 quarter had YoY. So it was a big 'role model'.
It did miss the market predictions, but not predictions made by rational people. There was no basis to expect a Q1 and Q2 perfomance from a quarter that didn't have any new product is two of the three main lines.
When you combine all the new things that made sales in late 2010 and 2011 quarters dispersed, and put it into only two of them. That's only logical. And it's not only dictated by Apple policy but also tech development.
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They should maybe reverse the iPhone and iPad release cycles. It would iron out the curve because the two quarters dependant on iPad which are still lower would be helped by the holiday season.
But it may not be practical. Also, if rumors are true, we should be getting a cooler retina iPad in time for the holiday quarter
And they'll probably sell 40M+ iPhones in the October quarter. If Apple launched a new phone 6 months after people purchased the 4s I think you'd have a lot of pissed off customers. I would have been one of them. Is Samsung updating their top line Galaxy smartphone in 6 month intervals? Maybe Apple needs more than one iPhone model but I don't think they need to upgrade it more than yearly.
Bingo! They need multiple models with staggered updates. Just like they're planning for the iPad. This market is booming and they need to address all parts of the market not just a single niche.
5 Words: Amazing given the Global Economy.
Sure but that's not the story. Here's a better way to illustrate how the stock market works. If the expectations were lower going into earnings, the stock would have also been trading lower going in. Once earnings were met, the stock would probably not move up or down appreciably.
But since expectations weren't met, the stock had to adjust to the new expectations.
Then maybe Apple should have sent clearer signals about what they expected and made their guidances even lower, to account for their usual conservative figures. This is what hurt them the most, barely beating their own guidance, as it was not their habit for over 10 years.
That's the whole point. You can argue back and forth and how "normal" the dip was compared to other years where no such dip occurred, but you can't argue their overall performance vs their guidance was abnormal and you can't say the market predictions were not made by rational people when those people rationally studied Apple's past performance vs their guidance to base their predictions on, which is quite an objective and rational position in and of itself.
The end result is there before us. Both a never before seen dip in unit sales for their driving product, the iPhone, and a much poorer than usual performance vs their guidance.
Read the article again. The article said that Apple beat their predictions but not Wall Street's predictions.
Apple posted revenue of $35.0 billion and net quarterly profit of $8.8 billion, or $9.32 per diluted share
The company did beat its own guidance, however. Last quarter, Apple said it would make $34 billion in revenue and earnings of $8.67 per share.
I wasn't making a point about marketshare, I was making a point about subjective view of iPhone usage and marketing. There is currently not a carrier in the Netherlands that isn't promoting the iPhone 4S. I work as a consultant and visit other companies regularly. Many of these are adding Apple to their corporate mobile options, or are dumping BB. Bring your own device is also catching on and people are brining iPhones, not Blackberries.
So, yeah marketshare is very low here still, but that doesn't mean Apple is playing a mean catchup game here and very successful too.
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This is simply not true. Only this year the US has surpassed the 50% smartphone to dumbphone ratio http://content.usatoday.com/communities/technologylive/post/2012/03/nielsen-about-half-of-all-americans-have-a-smartphone/1#.UBDW1alhgc5.
Many other regions are still far below the 50% mark. With the expansion to China, Eastern Europe and South America Apple is aggressively widening its global reach into markets where up until now Android was uncontested. There will be many people waiting to try out iPhones to see what all the fuss in other countries was about.
This is a market that is massive and is nowhere near to saturation.
most people in those countries don't have $650 plus VAT for a phone. the ultra cheap android phones are selling there
Huh? I didn't say Apple should stop developing new devices. I said they should release them in a more unpredictable manner. Like they do with their Macs.
Those regions are rapidly growing in GDP. China is one of Apple's main markets. These are the regions where Apple will make the big profits in the future. Not in Europe and the US. Growth is in South America, China and Eastern Europe and trailing far behind but also joining the club is Africa.
It's not about now, it's about the near future. Apple is positioning itself in those markets where the future gains will be. Provided they will be able to continue making products that people would buy.
I'm sure it is but have you seen worldwide interest rates lately? They are at an all time low around the world. If Apple used the money to make acquisitions they would generate a much better return on their (our) investment. How many companies in the tech world operate on a 2% profit margin? Not many - it's more like 10 or 20%. That's all I'm saying. They would make a lot more money by investing this money in acquisitions than they ever will make from bank interest.
