Apple's 2010 Annual Report: Hiring Spree, Ad Budget Increase, Lower Gross Margins Ahead

[Flore]

"One of the Company’s customers accounted for 11% of net sales in 2009"

Did I miss something? What could that refer to? AT&T "buying" iPhones from Apple?

 

[apple1990]

That's an accurate assessment, except I'd also say that the management is also structured more efficiently. Jobs doesn't believe in more then 100 people on a team.

I understand at MS there are even teams working at cross-purposes. That's more common when a company is throwing money and people at a project. It gets so big it becomes unmanageable and unfocused.

Most Retail Store Leaders manage teams of 100+ now.

 

[backdraft]

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Hmmm.. Microsoft has 86,000 employees. Apple has 46,600. Yet (as of the last quarter) they're roughly equal in revenue for the last 12 months (62-65M). So Apple employees are 50% more efficient than their MSFT counterpart in terms of generating revenue.

I wonder how many of the 46,600 employees are developers, I would imagine a large majority work in Apple retail.

If Im not mistaken Apple has around 10,000 developers, Microsoft easily has triple, quadruple or quintuple developers more. With the work Apple has been putting out it really shows the efficiency at Apple. Though I'm pretty sure it puts a strain on Apple Engineers, hopefully Apple can hire more quality people to help out on the development side. I would hate to see software development stagnate especially pro apps and server products. Apple should hire more qualified engineers so iOS, Mac OS, pro apps and server apps can all be developed/worked on simultaneously.

 

[rdowns]

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I wonder how many of the 46,600 employees are developers, I would imagine a large majority work in Apple retail.

22,400 in retail according to last quarter's results.

 

[alent1234]

Think! Apple charges you $100 for an app. That's "Income." They keep $30, that's "profit." So the margin was 30%. Of course they have overhead on running the app store and paying the goofballs that approve apps, so after that is removed from the profit, the net margin will be under 30% somewhere.

it's gross profit, you still have to pay for the servers, application, credit card fees, storage, etc. most of the $30 is spent on all these things. it's not like the app store is hosted on hard drives bought on sale at best buy. SAN hard drives will run you 10 times the retail price of consumer models.

back when 1TB drives were $100 or so my employer bought some 500GB hard drives from EMC for $800 each

 

[wizard]

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Of course, the more apps on the iOS and Mac App Stores, the more the gross margins will compress (at least down towards 30%). Even before factoring bandwidth and servers (really the only overhead), the gross margins by definition can't be more than 30%, as they're passing 70% of revenue on to the developers.

That said, given the minimal cost of sales, etc..., I'm sure they'll take as much of those margins as they can possibly get day, night, and weekends.

The app stores have to be a big part of the equation. Margins, contrary to popular belief, have to be very solid on the iPad and new AIRs. The only other possibility is the new Apple TV.

Looking further out into the future that data center and some of the rumored possibilities for its use might be a factor also. Streaming movies for 0.99¢ a pop can be extremely profitable. Also putting Mobile Me on a more competitive footing will cost some cash too. The timing of the data centers arrival with these announcements is interesting to say the least.

 

[NinjaHERO]

Sounds like they are planning to shrink the difference between their cost and ours. A win for us I hope. Competition rocks.

 

[Xtremehkr]

And with lower gross margins will come an increase in market share.