Apple Reports Record First Quarter Results • Hacker News Board

Re: Apple Reports Record First Quarter Results

#71

Post by Infinitesimus » Tue, Jan 27, 2015, 10:50 PM UTC

jacquesm wrote: post #18

Samsung will do their earnings announcements on the 29th, it will be interesting to compare those two side-by-side. Apple is doing extremely well on the margins but they have actually lost ground when going by the numbers (~30% market share now vs ~70% android).

I'm not convinced Apple cares about market share in the smartphone war. They are still destroying the competition when it comes to profit and in their world, that's what matters. Google's game with Android is to get it into the hands of as many people as possible.

Apple's goals differ from the idea of getting as many users as people. The company seems to be more focused on getting a number of people who will almost absolutely buy their brand. That's their strength imo. How many businesses can boast of guaranteed lines outside their stores for hours when launching a product? (Bear in mind that lining up is very irrational for a lot of those who spend hours there seeing as they can often grab it online or from a carrier store directly. )

They operate by a follow the money mindset and it works excellently for them. Get people to love your product - this loyal customer we seek in the startup world - and you're in very good hands.

Kudos to them for their work

Re: Apple Reports Record First Quarter Results

#72

Post by Maascamp » Tue, Jan 27, 2015, 10:50 PM UTC

fidotron wrote: post #6

Truly phenomenal. But then when no one else is making decent laptops this is what happens. If anything the gap has grown thanks to Windows 8. I'm not a fan of Yosemite by any stretch, but it is very much the least bad of the available options. And on mobile, iOS is very clearly in for the long haul now. There was a time a couple of years ago when Android looked like it might gain enough momentum to sweep them away, b…

Apple's laptop division and the appeal of OSX have very little to do with these revenue numbers. At 6.9B Mac sales are only a few multiples of Microsoft's fledgling Surface business, let alone the laptop market in general.

IPhones on the other hand...

Re: Apple Reports Record First Quarter Results

#73

Post by davidiach » Tue, Jan 27, 2015, 10:51 PM UTC

smackfu wrote: post #69

mrb wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Sometimes just to wrap my head around really large numbers like this..." Personally I like to divide profits and revenues by the number of employees. They have 98 000 employees so they generated revenues of $761 000 and net profits of $184 000 per employee in Q4 2014. Think about this: if you work for Apple, on average you helped the company generate $0.76 million dollars in sales in the last 3 months. Edit: @smackf…

It's a weird metric, because 1 guy at Apple can hire a firm of 100,000 employees at FoxConn in China to do the actual work for Apple. If those employees instead worked for Apple directly, the end result would be the same but the amount per employee would be far less.

And FoxConn can of course hire millions of other people to do the actual work for them (mine the materials needed for the products, prepare them, ship them and so on).

Re: Apple Reports Record First Quarter Results

#74

Post by TTPrograms » Tue, Jan 27, 2015, 10:52 PM UTC

mrb wrote: post #54

ykl wrote: post #9

Sometimes just to wrap my head around really large numbers like this, I like to put things in units of aircraft carriers. The US Navy's last finished carrier cost $6.2 billion[1], meaning that $74.6 billion[2] is enough to buy Apple 12 nuclear carriers, a.k.a. a nuclear carrier fleet larger than that of the US Navy. Of course this is an inaccurate and very silly comparison[3], but at least for me it does give some se…

"Sometimes just to wrap my head around really large numbers like this..." Personally I like to divide profits and revenues by the number of employees. They have 98 000 employees so they generated revenues of $761 000 and net profits of $184 000 per employee in Q4 2014. Think about this: if you work for Apple, on average you helped the company generate $0.76 million dollars in sales in the last 3 months. Edit: @smackf…

That's surprisingly reasonable. The rule of thumb I've heard is only half of employee expenses is salary, so that gives you an average "effective" salary of $90,000 for Apple employees.

Re: Apple Reports Record First Quarter Results

#75

Post by dude_abides » Tue, Jan 27, 2015, 10:53 PM UTC

aaronbrethorst wrote: post #17

Some interesting tidbits in the earnings call ( http://www.macrumors.com/2015/01/27/apple-earnings-1q15/ ) * Apple Watch is coming in April * 39.9% gross margins * 1 billion iOS devices sold since 2007 * 97% csat for iPhone as measured by Changewave * Mac revenue was $6.9 billion

>>1 billion iOS devices sold since 2007

That's an insane stat. Assuming average cost of an iphone as 500$, and 70% profit margin for an iphone, Apple has made 350 billion in profits on selling iPhones since 2007!!

Any idea what would the equivalent figure in Android profits for Samsung be? Android crossed 1 billion devices sold in 2013, but my guess is the number is going to be much smaller.

Re: Apple Reports Record First Quarter Results

#76

Post by hyperbovine » Tue, Jan 27, 2015, 10:54 PM UTC

okibeogezi wrote: post #45

pdknsk wrote: post #19

It shows that margin on Apple products is too high. This leaves plenty of room for some company to come into the market and steal their customers. That it hasn't happened shows the strength of Apple. They make products people will pay premium for.

Apple makes luxury products. People like luxury products. Luxury products have strong brand appeal so they can comfortably ask people to pay more for products. Any other company that sells like phones at Apple's price range will FAIL. You either make something extremely better for the same price or just as good at a lower price. Neither is a guaranty for success though.

They make luxury products and yet everyone owns one. That is the real genius.

Re: Apple Reports Record First Quarter Results

#77

Post by deeviant » Tue, Jan 27, 2015, 10:56 PM UTC

wvenable wrote: post #65

fidotron wrote: post #6

Truly phenomenal. But then when no one else is making decent laptops this is what happens. If anything the gap has grown thanks to Windows 8. I'm not a fan of Yosemite by any stretch, but it is very much the least bad of the available options. And on mobile, iOS is very clearly in for the long haul now. There was a time a couple of years ago when Android looked like it might gain enough momentum to sweep them away, b…

Windows 8 is not the problem; it's the terrible PC hardware. Even when the hardware is good, manufacturers still screw up when it comes to drivers like this: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8546702 Most laptops are so low-end. Finding one that's decent is tough.

I think many would agree with me when I say, Windows 8 was at least part, if not the biggest part of the problem.

Nobody wants to relearn a UI just because MS wants to create a bridge into windows phone. The fact is the UI changes did not serve the average MS user, but served Mircrosoft's business ambitions.

Any feature that I care about in Windows 8(faster boot, better monitor support, and ah I don't even know of anything else I would care about) could have easily been put into Windows 7 without UI changes and everybody would have been happy. But instead they packaged up the good stuff with a big FU to the power users, who happened to have disproportionate influence on PC acquisition choices and it's not like it was just the power users that were completely flummoxed by the UI changes.

Windows PC hardware is fine, drivers are more difficult because there is so much more Win PC hardware out there, but in general I have very little difficulty supporting a multitude of windows hardware/drivers. I actually have a much more difficult time getting driver support in Linux, but for different reasons. Basically, drivers are not what is holding PC sales down, it is Windows 8. It's not just that many saw Windows 8 as a step or two backwards, but the big loss is that it also failed to bring Windows forward.

Re: Apple Reports Record First Quarter Results

#78

Post by raquo » Tue, Jan 27, 2015, 10:56 PM UTC

puranjay wrote: post #63

potatolicious wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

More than Windows sucking, the OEM laptop industry has largely fumbled hardware. For a while it looked like Dell and/or Samsung might actually give Apple a run for its money in terms of design and quality, but that fell flat on its face. I'm a pretty biased sample, but honestly I know more people running non-OSX on Apple laptops than I know people running non-OSX on non-Apple laptops. Apple's laptops beat the rest of…

It's a big branding issue as well. I know Apple makes two laptops: MBAs and MBPs. I don't know what all laptops Dell or Lenovo make. I don't know if they have ultrabooks, and if they do, what are their names. When I buy a new Windows laptop, I sort by specs, not brand. I avoid a few brands (HP, Acer), but as long as I get good enough specs at a good enough price, I'll buy anything. I don't care about specific models/…

Very true. Consider that this is the main Laptops* page on samsung.com: http://www.samsung.com/ca/consumer/office/mobile-computing

It's as if they want their laptops to be as generic as possible.

* They don't even have a Laptops page. They have an ATIV page which bundles everything from mice to all-in-ones under the brand.

Re: Apple Reports Record First Quarter Results

#79

Post by kirse » Tue, Jan 27, 2015, 10:56 PM UTC

puranjay wrote: post #52

fidotron wrote: post #6

Truly phenomenal. But then when no one else is making decent laptops this is what happens. If anything the gap has grown thanks to Windows 8. I'm not a fan of Yosemite by any stretch, but it is very much the least bad of the available options. And on mobile, iOS is very clearly in for the long haul now. There was a time a couple of years ago when Android looked like it might gain enough momentum to sweep them away, b…

Google's lack of oversight in the Play store (which is actually a core philosophy) is really holding back Android. There are countless really, really crappy apps and clones crowding the app store. Plus, since most people pirate, developers can't make money (Monument Valley saw around 95% piracy rate and just $250k in revenue from Android, vs. $5.5M from iOS). This sunk Windows Mobile, which I still believe has the be…

You'll have to back up your "shit app store" claim in regards to Windows Phone... I decided try out all-MS with the purchase of a Nokia Icon last year and the integration has been phenomenal. I've also noticed only one bug (in IE of course), and the phone rarely restarts itself like my Droid Maxx often does. Rudy Huyn also creates solid clones of every single popular Andy/iOS app.

The UI is cleaner, Nokia Maps > Google Maps especially for Navigation (full GPS offline nav has saved me more than once), complete MS Office app integration, Outlook email client is slick, camera is better than Android/iOS, OneDrive integration works perfectly. I've been very surprised at how well executed it is, and 8.1 promises to be even better with Cortana, etc.

To date I've had one app that didn't have an equivalent from WinPhone devs, that was the Amazon Seller App. Then again, I don't spend time playing phone games so I'm not the target market. I keep a Droid Maxx around in case there's a niche app I absolutely must use.

Re: Apple Reports Record First Quarter Results

#80

Post by amatix » Tue, Jan 27, 2015, 10:58 PM UTC

TTPrograms wrote: post #74

mrb wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Sometimes just to wrap my head around really large numbers like this..." Personally I like to divide profits and revenues by the number of employees. They have 98 000 employees so they generated revenues of $761 000 and net profits of $184 000 per employee in Q4 2014. Think about this: if you work for Apple, on average you helped the company generate $0.76 million dollars in sales in the last 3 months. Edit: @smackf…

That's surprisingly reasonable. The rule of thumb I've heard is only half of employee expenses is salary, so that gives you an average "effective" salary of $90,000 for Apple employees.

The $184K is net profit, so each employee's salary is already counted. Another way of thinking about it: every Apple employee can get a $180K salary increase and they'd still make money.