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Apple's 3rd Quarter 2006 Financial Results
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plinden said:
Not surprising - until they announce the Intel Powermacs, I think that desktop sales will continue to decline. But once they get those new Powermacs out, I think new users - including gamer types - will start picking up. You'd be surprise how many times I've heard that the Macbook Pro is quite the gaming machine.
Lollypop said:
Yes I can. Like I said, I just fire up the package-manager, find the app in question and click "Install". That really is all there is to it. No need to browse the web, looking for installers to download.
Things are different these days. You are basing your judgement on SUSE9, which was released three years ago. During that three years, Linux has made HUGE progress. Things are chaning for the better, and they are changing FAST. I would say that Linux has changed more during the last three years than it did during the five years before 2003.
Note: that is NOT a bad thing for Apple. I bet that Apple would much rather co-exists with Linux than with Windows. There could never be a monopoly Linux could exploit to harm competitors, Microsoft could do that, and they have done it. Linux is open and follows established standards, Microsoft does not, if they can get away with it. Linux has no interest in destroying competitors, Microsoft does.
Well, SUSE does ship with tons of apps on the DVD (mainly so that it could be used wby people without broadband). But if you look at Ubuntu for example, it ships with relatively few apps. In a way, they have selected "best of breed"-apps for their distro. But if the user wants to have some additional piece of software, he can just fire up the package-manager, where he can choose from 16.000 pieces of software. The app the user is looking for is most likely listed there. If he's installing a piece of commercial software, they usually ship with nice installers that are not one bit harder to use than the ones in OS X or Windows.
You have no need to do that. Seriously. I haven't built my own kernels in years. And when I did, it was because I wanted to do it, not because I had to do it.
Just because you CAN compile your own kernel does not mean that you are required to do so. The possibility is there for power-users.
I disagree. In Linux all the apps I could even want were just few mouse-clicks away. On OS X (and on Windows) I have to hunt for those apps in internet, only to find out that I'm expected to pay for them. I had none of those problems in Linux.
There are several distros, because one distro can't do it all. Want an OS that can be tweaked and customized to your exact needs and for your specific hardware? Obviously Ubuntu is not ideal then, but Gentoo is. Want a distro that "just works"? Ubuntu would be a good choice then. Want a distro with rock-solid reliablity? Try Debian. Want to run Red Hat servers, but don't want to pay for support? Use CentOS.
All those distros exist because there are users who find them to be better for their needs than the other distros are. And there's nothing wrong with that, since one size does not fit all. No-one could tell the users that "from now on, there will be just one distro". And even if someone could say that, the users who were unhappy with the "one true distro" could start their own distro if they wanted to.
Why do users argue which distro is best? For the same reason why Mac-users tell Linux and Windows-users that OS X is the best? For the same reason why BMW-drivers tell others that BMW is better than Merc is? People like to rationalise their choice of OS.
They know that there can't be one distro that "does everything". Ubuntu wants to be easy to use OS that just works. Gentoo wnts to be as customizable, flexible and powerful as possible. It would be very, very hard for single OS to offer both of those ideoogies in one package. It would en up being "jack of all trades, master of none".
Take Mandrake (Mandiva these days) and Red Hat for example. Years ago Red Hat decided to use GNOME as their default desktop. There were bunch of Red Hat users who liked the distro, but liked KDE more than GNOME. So they took Red Hat, replaced GNOME with KDE and voila: Mandrake was born. From that point te two started to diverge. as independted OS'es.
Interesting
Anybody else notice that they predicted increased revenue but decreased net income? That SCREAMS to me that they plan on selling some unreleased lower-margin products. It pretty much has to be something large considering everything is getting cheaper as time goes by so we're either talking about processor updates across the board, a drop in price (MacBook 999 anyone?
or an updated nano with greater storage capacity at same price points. I would tend to think it's the latter seeing as how that would directly correlate to an increase in sales but a decrease in margin. Any other thoughts??
Anybody else notice that they predicted increased revenue but decreased net income? That SCREAMS to me that they plan on selling some unreleased lower-margin products. It pretty much has to be something large considering everything is getting cheaper as time goes by so we're either talking about processor updates across the board, a drop in price (MacBook 999 anyone?
or an updated nano with greater storage capacity at same price points. I would tend to think it's the latter seeing as how that would directly correlate to an increase in sales but a decrease in margin. Any other thoughts??Apple stock up
Currently reporting at $61.10. Up $7.00 from yesterday.
Yahoo article reports: According to Gartner, Apple shipped 766,000 PCs in the second quarter of the year, good enough for 4.6% of the U.S. market, and a 15.4% increase over a year ago. Apple's growth rate exceeded those of the No. 1 and No. 2 PC companies, Dell Inc.
Currently reporting at $61.10. Up $7.00 from yesterday.
Yahoo article reports: According to Gartner, Apple shipped 766,000 PCs in the second quarter of the year, good enough for 4.6% of the U.S. market, and a 15.4% increase over a year ago. Apple's growth rate exceeded those of the No. 1 and No. 2 PC companies, Dell Inc.
Just to give some more figures - Gartner says worldwide PC sales are 55 million compared to 49.5 million this time last year, and 16.6 million in the US compared to 15.6 million last year.APPLENEWBIE said:Currently reporting at $60.80 at 12:44 ET. Up 6.73 from yesterday.
Yahoo article reports: According to Gartner, Apple shipped 766,000 PCs in the second quarter of the year, good enough for 4.6% of the U.S. market, and a 15.4% increase over a year ago. Apple's growth rate exceeded those of the No. 1 and No. 2 PC companies, Dell Inc.
But I wonder where they got 766,000 from. The sales figures separate out retail from regional sales, but considering that most Apple stores are in the US, the vast majority of the 216,000 retail sales would be in the US, so US sales could be anything between 642,000-858,000. That's 3.9%-5.2% US market share. Looks like they picked a percentage right in the middle, but I would say it's nearer to 5%. Of course, worldwide it's still only 2.4%.
To put this in perspective, Dell sold 9.73 million PC worldwide and 5.3 million in the US, ie. 7x Apple's shipments.
milo said:
That's funny that is not what they told us when I worked for Aldus, although there was one time that we could not trade.
I think the blackout period is only for execs and VPs, most of the time.
Although that could be because we were in San Diego and not Seatle, companies with lots of remote offices would probably be the same.
Some people take SOOOOO LONG to get IT
BUYING A MAC IS NO LONGER SWITCHING
According to the stats all you fine people are posting Apple is now simply growing as fast as all of the other small fast growing PC companies, mostly at Dells expense.
Although my guess is Mac sales will now have a nice peak and LEAD the PC industry around and just after Christmas, this will happen year after year.
Kids will return their regular PCs after Christmas to BUY A MAC ! WOOPPPY !!!
Thus, I think it is very likely that Leopard will be announced right after WWDC and that will lead to EXTREMELY high Mac sales at Christmas this year as it is now clear the Mac is the IN COMPUT and Mac groupies such as myself will be trading up after Leopard and the new laptop design ships
HOTDOG
OH !
And Apple could start to DOMINATE PC sales again since they are the BEST multi-OS platform, which would also allow them to lead PC sales in the 3rd quarter as that is when most edSales occur.
Notice how low Apple still is in world wide sales, world wide sales are now very significant.
So my guess is Apple sales increase from here over the next year 4 fold !!!
BUYING A MAC IS NO LONGER SWITCHING
According to the stats all you fine people are posting Apple is now simply growing as fast as all of the other small fast growing PC companies, mostly at Dells expense.
Although my guess is Mac sales will now have a nice peak and LEAD the PC industry around and just after Christmas, this will happen year after year.
Kids will return their regular PCs after Christmas to BUY A MAC ! WOOPPPY !!!
Thus, I think it is very likely that Leopard will be announced right after WWDC and that will lead to EXTREMELY high Mac sales at Christmas this year as it is now clear the Mac is the IN COMPUT and Mac groupies such as myself will be trading up after Leopard and the new laptop design ships
HOTDOG
OH !
And Apple could start to DOMINATE PC sales again since they are the BEST multi-OS platform, which would also allow them to lead PC sales in the 3rd quarter as that is when most edSales occur.
Notice how low Apple still is in world wide sales, world wide sales are now very significant.
So my guess is Apple sales increase from here over the next year 4 fold !!!
Demoman said:
Somewhat true. Momentum buying is generally for fools. Unless your a money manager with dedicated stock research, your always going to be late to the party. While you can still make money doing it, you can just as easily be the one without the chair in musical chairs.
Demoman said:
Microsoft has never been technologically superior to Apple. At best, they were kind of close, with Win2k. At worst, they were about 7-10 years behind with DOS. They have always been catching up technologically. Microsoft dominance is due to a host of factors. Superior technology isn't one of them.
Demoman said:
I don't know about sleeping giant. Apple has always been a giant in the computer industry. At their best, they were the largest pc manufacturer in the world. Even at their worst, they were a top ten PC company. Seems like you, like many people, confuse windows marketshare vs. computer manufacturer marketshare. Sun hasn't been a player for about 15 years. Just a much better version of SGI. They were in decline over 10 years ago.
And as for stock price like Google vs. Apple... what you said was meaningless. Per share price is meaningless in the way you describe. Just because Google stock is $455/share doesn't necessarily mean it is expensive compared to Apple stock. Berkshire Hathaway stock is over $90,000, but it is arguably cheaper than either. The real metric is price-to-earnings ratio. And the real performance indicator is percentage returns. If you buy 10 shares of a stock @ $50 or 1 share of a stock @ $500 and both increase 10%, either way, you made $50. This is exactly why stock splits are meaningless.
And finally, don't take this as coming down hard on you. Your coming to the right conclusions, but your reasons are off base.
Apple is poised to do well because :
Microsoft is following standard monopolist policy of status quo. They were never quality innovators, but with monopoly, their innovation has slowed to a crawl. When you have a monopoly, it is not in your best interest to change anything. Why would you want to when your at the top? By the way, this is not unique. The iPod pace of change has slowed a lot now that they are clearly the dominant leader.
The PC industry is largely stable now. What that means is that most of the applications people use are mature and stable. Also, most computers are plenty powerful enough for everyday tasks. Effectively, what that means is that to a large extent, it does not matter what platform you use (web browsing for example). This applies especially to home users. So instead of application compatibility, the home user looks to other things like ease of use, stability, security, design, etc. In other words, there aren't severe penalties like in the past for switching or choosing one platform over another.
The Windows base is essentially stagnant. The lion's share of the windows market is corporations. And that market is basically built out. Again, there is nowhere to go but down. And Apple corporate presence is tiny. No where to go but up. Your own company actions is a good example.
Apple now has it's own cash cow a la Microsoft Office. Its called the iPod.
Apple's current management is frankly, ridiculously superior to Microsoft's. Ballmer is a fool. I'm not sure what is qualifications are except for being a college buddy of Bill Gates.
yac_moda said:My guess is it will open UP a great deal, around $4 then drop $1 or 2, 2 hours into the day and then climb to finish up 5 to 6$
Seasonally and VERY consistently AAPL drops from March to the end of sept and then rises strongly from late Aug. to Christmas. Then rises more in Jan. rests in Feb. and quickly and unpredictably peaks in March or May !?!?!?!
Some years you will make %100 playing it this way, every once in a while you might loose %10, when betting makes bets that have BIG upsides and small downsides !!!
That is the general trend of the stock market. And the US economy.
Late spring/summer... market trends flat to down. People are more interested in vacations than working.
Sept. market rallies briefly as people get back to work.
October is traditionally the worst month to be in stocks. Every major crash has happened in October.
Nov-Dec the market usually rallies. I attribute this to Christmas and bonuses/performance rating. Money managers need to boost their performance numbers for the year so they pump up stocks, usually pouring into any stock that has performed decently. It may not go up, but at least they can say they were in winning stocks.
Jan-early spring usually has selling. A combination of cashing out of the Christmas rally and tax selling.
yac_moda said:
Probably depends on the company. It's still very dicey to make transactions right before an announcement, since accusations could easily be made of insider trading. I suppose at McDonalds they don't enforce a blackout period for the guys flipping burgers...
Last company I worked for, there was a blackout period for everyone, but it was longer for executive and sales staff, or in fact for anyone who might have had detailed inside knowledge. For instance one colleague, a software engineer, shared an office for a few months with a sales manager, and during that time he had a longer blackout period than the rest of us because he might have overheard some insider information.yac_moda said:
Also, we weren't allowed to short the company stock ... since that's kind of like athletes betting that their team will lose, and you might be tempted to release information that would tank the stock.
Evangelion said:
Not quite. The main thing that makes a stock attractive is consistent growth and strong financials (increasing profits, increasing tax liability, decreasing percentage of operating costs, etc.) This is the reason Apple's stock looks so good right now; today's announcement shows strong growth this quarter and suggests the trend will continue.
macidiot said:
No I TOTALLY figured this one out. Its during this period that taxes get paid, either at the end of march or late until Aug. and with businesses this is cheap and easy to do. So people sell stock to pay their taxes and that depresses the market -- especially if they made a lot of money which could have been on stocks thus it is guaranteed to happen.
macidiot said:
But Oct. is also the second or third biggest gaining month.
macidiot said:
Yes, I have heard these before in many places but I think there are larger money movers that actually create it although I am not sure what they are.
Although Christmas is no doubt BIG, I think corp. hiring and purchasing to start new projects is what rules the January effect, but there should other things I have not thought of.
Certainly with product intro ruled stocks like tech stocks Christmas and the new years creates a big effect.
I think the #1 shifter of market fortunes though is USA Presidents and popular pres. end of 8 years as pres. cause a big down effect. Especially now that we have had good feds for so many years, that hold back on the money supply although the HYPER WW competition created by the internet may actually be the BIGGEST force here.
And most pres. now days are smart enough to restrict the money supply strictly during their first 2 years otherwise all hell can break loose.
Bush didn't need to do this, 911 did it, but the lack of lowing taxes and gradual secret tax hikes by Clinton were VERY BAD for the economy.
The presidential transition and voting problems blew-out the economies back !!!
yac_moda said:
IMO the President has very little direct effect. Since the President barely affects the economy, there really isn't much he can do to the stock market. Anything he might do in the form of stimulus packages... tax cuts, credits, etc. take years to work it's way into the economy. That said, there can definitely be a long term effect from a president's actions.
The Federal Reserve directly affects both the economy and stock market. They are the ones controlling money supply. Not the President. And they are independent of the White house. Alan Greenspan was chairman of the fed for 3 different presidents. However, the Fed does not care about the stock market per se. The Fed is interested in controlling inflation and the economy, avoiding overheating and softening downturns. Essentially, the Fed tries to "tune" the economy.
The President can not restrict money supply. What you've seen over the past 25 years was basically 3 administrations (Reagan/Bush, Clinton, Bush Jr.) that essentially transitioned during downturns in the business cycle. Coincidence.
And I have no idea what "hyper ww competition from the internet" means.
macidiot said:
Your summation is a leap of faith, check your market history what I said has STRONG historical backing yours does NOT.
The USA President has a HUGE effect day to day ON THE WORLD scene and that effects the value of the dollar and thus everything else especially foreign investment which is THE BIGGEST money flow.
And Jimmy Carter is the BEST EXAMPLE of a disaster of foreign confidence.
macidiot said:
I YOU believe THIS then you believe everything else he says and you are not paying any attention to WHAT HE DOES
macidiot said:
Duuu !!
macidiot said:
Without any doubt the President can and does, by WHO he appoints to the position of Fed Chairman.
Presidents that have a clue also have HUGE control over the money supply by how they fine tune and enforce immigration law, the demographics of entrepreneurialism is hugely effected in a relatively short time by emigration from europe since the average age of those emigrants is around 35.
The Feds money supply adjustments are diluted by this immigration which has a BIG effect on economic growth and the job market, although I don't expect you to understand this.
macidiot said:
¡¡¡ I AM NOT SURPRISED !!!
You just like to argue !
yac_moda said:Your summation is a leap of faith, check your market history what I said has STRONG historical backing yours does NOT.
The USA President has a HUGE effect day to day ON THE WORLD scene and that effects the value of the dollar and thus everything else especially foreign investment which is THE BIGGEST money flow.
And Jimmy Carter is the BEST EXAMPLE of a disaster of foreign confidence.
I YOU believe THIS then you believe everything else he says and you are not paying any attention to WHAT HE DOES
Duuu !!
Without any doubt the President can and does, by WHO he appoints to the position of Fed Chairman.
Presidents that have a clue also have HUGE control over the money supply by how they fine tune and enforce immigration law, the demographics of entrepreneurialism is hugely effected in a relatively short time by emigration from europe since the average age of those emigrants is around 35.
The Feds money supply adjustments are diluted by this immigration which has a BIG effect on economic growth and the job market, although I don't expect you to understand this.
¡¡¡ I AM NOT SURPRISED !!!
You just like to argue !
Your dreaming. The only thing a president can directly do to a market is provide a psychological boost, like when Reagan took office. The president can pass laws that make things favorable for the economy and stock market. However, this takes years to see the effects. And in case you don't know, the president can NOT pass laws by himself.
Again, since you clearly have no idea about government or economics, the market did well during the 80's because the overall economy was doing well. Which was normal, considering the country was in recession during the Carter administration. Oh, and the economy did poorly during the BUsh administration. Then did well during Clinton. It's called the business cycle. Which you obviously have no idea what that is. If you did, you would understand what the Fed does.
WTF does foreign confidence have to due with domestic economy? Carter was a failure economically because he was ineffective. And this was due to Congress. And AGAIN, there is something called the business cycle. You should study your history. The value of the dollar has little effect on day to day matters. Additionally, the foreign investment you speak of is important to debt, in the form of bonds and t-bills. It has far less effect on the stock market. You should study how world markets work.
While the president does appoint reserve board members, again your completely wrong. When Bush came into office, Greenspan was Chairman. So obviously, Bush did not appoint him. In fact, Ronald Reagan appointed him. Additionally, the governers serve for a time long enough to effectively keep them independent (14 years). So tell me, how does the President instruct the Fed to adjust the money supply? Oh that's right, he can't.
Basically, what you are saying is that the President also completely controls the Supreme court since the president also nominates justices? Whatever.
Immigration from Europe? What century are you living in? You think that effects the US economy? Puh-lease. Europe is in decline. Economically, the US pays attention to China and the far east. Not Europe. The money supply is diluted by immigration? WTF. And the President controls the money supply through immigration law? Those statements are absurd. In fact, they have to be some of the dumbest things I've heard in a long time.
I am guessing your living in Europe. Which would explain your euro-centric, myopic, and ill-informed opinions about how the US government and economy works.