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Apple Reports First Quarter Results

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Re: Apple Reports First Quarter Results

#81

Post by plg »

georgemcbay wrote: post #22

Phones and tablets are very close to the point that desktop/laptops got to a few years back where unless there is some major disruptive technology introduced (eg. batteries with 100%+ efficiency over current ones) on top of them the one you bought this year is pretty much good enough to keep for the next many years, until it breaks somehow. There will still be a market of ultra-fashion-conscious buyers who really nee…

In principle this could be true but I don't think it will be. A simply example: right now speech recognition happens in the cloud. Could be that a future device has a dedicated chip for speech recognition (or some kind of preprocessing). Then future versions of the OS will require this. Hence you have to upgrade.

This is how it has gone with things like graphics, animation, even sound. In principle the core elements of the Mac OS don't require extremely fast chips/hardware ... but once you get into the fancy desktop animations, the sound processing, face recognition (e.g. iPhoto), etc etc, you require fancier hardware.

There are still lots of directions for Apple to push their software, directions that will be aided by better and/or more specialized hardware.

If all you need is a text editor, an email client and some CPU power for crunching spreadsheets then for sure, all you "need" is a desktop circa 2000 (or even earlier ...) ... but if you want to run the latest OS, even if you don't need/want all the features of that latest OS, you need to keep up with the hardware.

Never mind games.

Re: Apple Reports First Quarter Results

#82

Post by ChuckMcM »

jmduke wrote: post #31

The magic paragraph: The Company sold 51 million iPhones, an all-time quarterly record, compared to 47.8 million in the year-ago quarter. Apple also sold 26 million iPads during the quarter, also an all-time quarterly record, compared to 22.9 million in the year-ago quarter. The Company sold 4.8 million Macs, compared to 4.1 million in the year-ago quarter. If I were to play armchair quarterback, I'd say that iPhones…

The trailing revenue number is one I've been watching as well. It shows solid execution but a not a lot of growth. This makes me more curious than ever to hear about this years products. They have had a solid year of flatness, so I don't doubt there is quite a bit of pressure on. Personally I'd like a 12" iPad with a retina screen and a Wacom class stylus with zero lag. Not holding my breath though.

Re: Apple Reports First Quarter Results

#83

Post by groups »

tcdent wrote: post #36
austenallred wrote: post #21

To understand scale: Apple has given $43 Billion to investors since July 2012. Twitter's market cap is $32 Billion. Apple's net profit of $13b over the last 3 months was more than the company made from its founding in 1977 'til the iPhone launched in 2007. Last night my wife and I were organizing our room, and ended up putting our computers together, and we found three MacBooks (one is really old), two iPads and two…

Not trying to one-up you, but I have at least a dozen Apple products lying around the house. I've been using them most of my life, so some go a-ways back. Some are for nostalgia, like an SE, a Portable, a 12" PowerBook and my well-worn first-gen iPhone. My G4 tower was still getting regular use as a file server until pretty recently. Now that we just upgraded to Airs, I have a couple MacBook Pros waiting around for s…

I think the poster's point was that he spends a lot of money on apple products, relative to his income. To understand apple's success, one should look at how much money ordinary people with ordinary jobs spend disproportionate money on products they wouldn't otherwise.

There's a graph somewhere of yearly sales figures of various cars vs the cost of those cars. There's a general exponential decline from say the toyota camry, which costs reasonably and sells a lot, to a Bentley, which is the opposite. But there's an irregular data point with the BMW 3-series, because many, many people stretch to afford it. It sells disproportionately well for that reason.

I'm not assigning judgment on how anyone spends their money, just pointing out that there are human reasons for business success and failure.

Re: Apple Reports First Quarter Results

#85

Post by shovel »

mdemare wrote: post #59
Perceval wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not to mention that before the iPhone Apple's P/E never dropped below 20 and was usually hovering around 40.

Apple's cash pile is 1/3 of their market cap. That means that is they'd use it to buy their own shares at the current price (they can't, they need to pay taxes on most of it first) their P/E ratio would drop to about 9.

I've always been amazed that AAPL trades at such a low PE multiple. Can you help me understand why?

Re: Apple Reports First Quarter Results

#86

Post by Tloewald »

georgemcbay wrote: post #51
empthought wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> could trivially be solved I'm going to guess you're neither a computer hardware nor a battery engineer.

I meant solved by making the battery replaceable, even if as a service of AppleCare or whatever if not the end-consumer. See: Teslas, which have to live by the same rules as everyone else when it comes to battery life issues but whose solution isn't 'throw your car out when it won't hold a charge anymore'.

A car is expected to last longer than a laptop, and no-one needs to carry a car around all day in their back pockets. Also note that replacing the entire battery is the only viable way to recharge your Tesla quickly. You can charge your iOS device while you use it.

When Teslas have seen the kind of prolonged use and abuse people's phones and computers have taken, let's see how their battery packs do.

And of course, Apple sells battery replacements at pretty reasonable prices, but most people don't bother because depreciation makes it not worthwhile.

Our kids are using our original iPad 1s and abuse the heck out of them, and they still get decent battery life.

Re: Apple Reports First Quarter Results

#87

Post by WalterBright »

benihana wrote: post #64
georgemcbay wrote: post #22

Phones and tablets are very close to the point that desktop/laptops got to a few years back where unless there is some major disruptive technology introduced (eg. batteries with 100%+ efficiency over current ones) on top of them the one you bought this year is pretty much good enough to keep for the next many years, until it breaks somehow. There will still be a market of ultra-fashion-conscious buyers who really nee…

It's funny. Every year, since 2007 I've heard this argument, that the market isn't big enough and every year: record growth and profits. No but seriously. This year is the year that Apple's iPhone success catches up to them. "Apple's iPhone business is finally going to fail this year" is the new " this is the year of the Linux desktop"

I've been in business since 1982 (minus a few gaps), and I am informed every year that I'm going to fail.

Re: Apple Reports First Quarter Results

#88

Post by lowglow »

I'm bearish on Apple. I just don't see the leadership or focus I once saw when Jobs was still at the helm. I think they still might have a few tricks up their sleeve, but I think we're going to see less innovation as the years go on.

Re: Apple Reports First Quarter Results

#89

Post by bane »

georgemcbay wrote: post #22

Phones and tablets are very close to the point that desktop/laptops got to a few years back where unless there is some major disruptive technology introduced (eg. batteries with 100%+ efficiency over current ones) on top of them the one you bought this year is pretty much good enough to keep for the next many years, until it breaks somehow. There will still be a market of ultra-fashion-conscious buyers who really nee…

Something interesting that Apple has been able to do the last few years is find one new technology, or push the notch up on an existing one, such that people feel they're significant enough upgrades that they end up buying whatever it is. What will Apple throw out next? I have no idea, but I'm expecting to be mildly surprised when it happens.

Re: Apple Reports First Quarter Results

#90

Post by jsz0 »

georgemcbay wrote: post #22

Phones and tablets are very close to the point that desktop/laptops got to a few years back where unless there is some major disruptive technology introduced (eg. batteries with 100%+ efficiency over current ones) on top of them the one you bought this year is pretty much good enough to keep for the next many years, until it breaks somehow. There will still be a market of ultra-fashion-conscious buyers who really nee…

I don't think we're quite there yet with tablets. Maybe another 3-4 years. They are relatively inexpensive and they have a strong hand-me-down life cycle. A lot of people buying new iPads every 1-2 years are doing so to give their old model to kids/family/etc. They are very personal devices no one really wants to share a tablet. There is also going to be more churn in the market because they are very mobile devices more prone to being broken or lost. Being very mobile devices they are more likely to be replaced/upgraded simply due to fashion/social pressure. Best parallel to that is car sales. A lot of people buy new cars simply because they don't want to drive an old/unfashionable car anymore.

SmartPhones are much closer to that 'good enough' point though I think subsidized devices are still very much in impulse buy territory for a lot of people. Given the cost of your cellular contract there's questionable value in saving $100-$200 every two years skipping an upgrade. You have to pay for the service either way it's in your best interest to have a device that can make the most of it. For unsubsidized devices (non-Apple devices at least) there is a healthy low-mid range market developing where the same trends should play out.

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