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Apple Reports Record First Quarter Results

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Re: Apple Reports Record First Quarter Results

#151

Remember, Apple needs to target the low end to succeed in China. They need to put out the crappiest, cheapest phone they possibly can otherwise Samsung and Xiaomi will eat their lunch. Edit: Obvious sarcasm is apparently not obvious enough.

I know you said sarcasm, but Apple is selling the last gen iphones at a competitive price against Samsung mid range in India.

For example: the iPhone 4S, 5c and 5s are 17,500 and 23,000 37500 Indian Rupees respectively. Compare that to the Galaxy S4 at ~26000 grand 2 at 17000, galaxy note 3 at 34000.

Atleast in India, the last gen Apple phones seem to be priced competitively with the last gen Samsung phones. This is just comparing the lowest models, and not getting into the specs, ofcourse.

Re: Apple Reports Record First Quarter Results

#152
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…

Just think of it as 9.4 iPhones per second.

Re: Apple Reports Record First Quarter Results

#153

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…

I think this is a big part of it. I would rather run Windows on an Macbook Pro than any of the other hardware (although the new Lenovo machines are getting closer). That said it is still the phone/tablet/media streams that dominate their income.

>> I would rather run Windows on an Macbook Pro than any of the other hardware

I honestly don't get why people often say that Macbooks are the best Windows laptops.

I have always found the Windows on Mac experience to be sub-par with respect to the key placement, driver behavior, and oversensitive scrolling with Apple mice.

I far prefer running Windows on a similarly equipped PC laptop. On the two Macbooks that I have run BootCamp on, I have always found it somewhat painful dealing with the subtle but noticeable differences related to the keyboard and pointing devices.

Re: Apple Reports Record First Quarter Results

#154
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…

> There was a time a couple of years ago when Android looked like it might gain enough momentum to sweep them away,

Could you expound on when that was? I remember their market share dipping as Android grew much faster, but I don't remember it every really looking like they'd disappear.

Re: Apple Reports Record First Quarter Results

#155
post #47

Wow $74.6 Billion Revenue and $18 Billion profit on 74.5M iPhones in a quarter is nuts. Apple also mentioned in the Conference call that the volatile exchange rate also hurt sales numbers by 4% (vs a constant exchange rate) which they're more susceptible to now that over 65% of their sales are outside of the US.

RMB is pretty strong, and Apple's 2nd largest market is China, so they are somewhat protected.

Re: Apple Reports Record First Quarter Results

#156
post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Their competition is Samsung. Something tells me the whole large ships argument is lost on Korean chaebols.

> the whole large ships argument is lost on Korean chaebols Especially when Samsung just built the world's largest: http://www.industrytap.com/worlds-largest-ship-ever-built-fi... :-)

Heh, funny that Apple would be forced to hire Samsung to build their carrier given where they are forced to source their processors.

Re: Apple Reports Record First Quarter Results

#157
post #8

This is pretty insane, I think $18 billion in quarterly profit is the largest ever for any corporations. Also the revenue from iPhone business alone now exceeds Microsoft and Google combined.

Introducing a larger device was exactly the right move it seems … I wonder how that interacts with their iPad business (which isn’t even just stagnant, it’s shrinking). Maybe it’s one of the reasons why the iPad really didn’t do this well this quarter? Not that it really matters all that much, though, if the iPhone 6 Plus is eating (part) of the iPad pie. Better that than a competitor.

I believe Tim Cook said that the iPad wasn't turning over as fast as the iPhone (people are keeping them more than 2 years) and that the 6+ is eating some of their tablet sales.

> Not that it really matters all that much, though, if the iPhone 6 Plus is eating (part) of the iPad pie

Certainly. Plus the iPhone 6+ is a $750+ device and it's competing with the $350+ iPad Mini. Add in the fact that iPhone users are incentivized (in the US at least) to replace their device every two years and that's probably much better than selling someone a $500 iPhone and losing the tablet sale to someone else.

Re: Apple Reports Record First Quarter Results

#158
post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

A salary increase of $180K quarterly (== $720K annually)!

Re: Apple Reports Record First Quarter Results

#159
post #121

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…

Serious question, what makes Apple laptops beat the rest of the industry? No docking station, can't change batteries, no touch screens, no spill resistant keyboards, no matte screen option,etc. You also need those dongles for ethernet and video and can't upgrade RAM or hard drives on the retina models. Sure, the OS (if you need/like OSX, there is little choice), and the trackpad (if you like that those) are good, the…

I definitely got a way better deal by a local merchant than any with any Apple laptop[1].

1: http://www.linux-onlineshop.de/Linux-Hardware/Linux-Notebook...

Re: Apple Reports Record First Quarter Results

#160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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

Right. Everyone.

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