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Apple Reports Record First Quarter Results

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Re: Apple Reports Record First Quarter Results

#271

Post by Simp »

Cookingboy wrote: post #41
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).

That number is old, in the most recent quarter Apple just rose to be the number 1 OEM in China, and took 55% marketshare in Japan, even took 30% marketshare in S.Korea, Samsung's home turf. Sure, globally Android will remain larger, but the trend is stabilizing if not reversing a little for now.

That's incorrect:

As of the end of Q3 2014, Android was the most popular operating system, with a 84.4% market share, followed by iOS with 11.7%

Re: Apple Reports Record First Quarter Results

#272

Post by 72deluxe »

freshyill wrote: post #143
capkutay wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They also need to open source iOS (also sarcasm)

And a netbook.

This made me laugh because I remember netbooks being a fad where everyone had one and tried working on an underpowered Atom CPU with a tiny battery, a tiny low-res screen running IE under XP with a billion browser toolbars installed, reducing their visible browser space to about 20px at the bottom. Oh the sad memories.

Strangely, the MacBook Air is essentially a Netbook, just better made and not in the "race to the bottom" of both price and quality.

Re: Apple Reports Record First Quarter Results

#273

Post by Cthulhu_ »

dba7dba wrote: post #230
hueving wrote: post #225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I disagree because at some point in the supply chain you have to draw the line. What about the company that made the processors? What about the memory? what about the one that mined the materials?

How about picking a car company for example? Don't most car companies directly hire employees that assemble the final product (car)?

Yeah, but you can't stuff a hundred thousand cars in a single shipping container.

Re: Apple Reports Record First Quarter Results

#274

Post by 72deluxe »

GoofballJones wrote: post #224
kryptiskt wrote: post #85

The best part of the report is that iPad sales are plunging. It's a victory for general purpose computing that that segment of the walled garden is in decline. Let's hope that open systems can gain a toehold in phones sometime too.

Sorry, I've been on "open systems" and walled gardens and at this point in my life, I prefer the walled garden. Whenever I wanted to do something in an "open system", it usually turned into a giant pain-in-the-ass or I got preached/yelled at by everyone. "oh, sorry, you don't have a driver for that yet. Maybe write one yourself and put it on github? Oh sorry, this system doesn't support that format because that forma…

I think there is a balance - with the walled garden you can walk around inside it until they decide that your favourite fruit tree is a bit old and they dig it up, and you are left with alternatives like shrubs and flowers, but no useful fruit tree. That's where the open systems help, such as the other replier stated where being able to run web servers and systems for development can be benefitted by open systems.

But you're right about many of those statements on open systems. I think the fact that stuff is only half-finished is the one that really annoyed me when I wanted to get stuff done. I could have written more and contributed but I had finite time and didn't want to have to do more stuff in order to do the stuff I wanted to do in the first place.

Plus, the endless CADT model of development in Linux land ("I'm NEW AROUND HERE. Let's bin this old nonsense that I've not used for long and START AGAIN! It'll be MUCH better than the old stuff. I will be because I SAID SO, plus I'm NEW AROUND HERE") got wearisome.

Re: Apple Reports Record First Quarter Results

#275

Post by 72deluxe »

kryptiskt wrote: post #115
gress wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Firstly it's not 'in decline' it has just reached saturation. 'Plunging' is just false. Secondly, the slowing of iPad sales has absolutely zero to do with any open systems.

-18% sales year over year is a plunge by any measure. It has everything to do with open systems. Walled gardens is a threat to them, it's a very important battle for everybody who cares about freedom.

I haven't bought a new guitar for a while. Does this mean that guitars are doomed?

How does NOT buying an iPad make any impact on freedom? Inaction by me doesn't suddenly cause action elsewhere.

Re: Apple Reports Record First Quarter Results

#276

Post by runeks »

jsprogrammer wrote: post #236
amatix wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Yeah, I think this is really showing how much Apple the organization is extracting from the individual Apple employees.

I'd argue that Apple isn't extracting value from employees, but rather creating value using employees.

It's not a zero-sum game. Apple creates value, it doesn't just move it from one place to another.

Re: Apple Reports Record First Quarter Results

#277

Post by 72deluxe »

pluma wrote: post #173
pluma wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's precisely what stopped me from buying into the Apple cosmos. If I want an Apple Watch, I need to buy an iPhone. If I buy an iPhone, I should use iTunes. In order to get a version of iTunes that isn't atrocious, I need to use OSX. In order to use OSX I need to buy an iMac or MBP. Want to use an iPod? Same thing, just skip the first step. Want to develop apps for (or port apps to) iOS? Again, same thing. I'm usi…

*everybody poops, I mean. That wasn't an intended to sound like an order.

Too late!

What a mess.

Re: Apple Reports Record First Quarter Results

#278

Post by TheOtherHobbes »

Jach wrote: post #229
Diederich wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And consider The Monster: http://finance.yahoo.com/q/ks?s=WMT+Key+Statistics Just shy of half a trillion dollars in yearly revenue, which generated 15.4 billion in profit. That's $1.3B revenue per day, or $55M revenue per hour, $920K/minute. A million dollars of revenue, every minute. Compared to nominal GDP, Wal-Mart Stores, Inc. is larger than Taiwan, Austria and Thailand. Granted, that's revenue, which is 'easy' c…

> How can we not start looking at some of these organizations less as companies, and more as countries? How about the reverse? Countries as companies? And why don't we look at how large, complex companies can do so much better financially than governments?

Companies can do so much better than governments because governments pay for all the things that companies use - like transport networks, education, healthcare, military cover, and so on.

Taxes are so small, relatively, companies get these benefits as a free, or at least as a heavily subsidised, handout.

Re: Apple Reports Record First Quarter Results

#279

Post by dEnigma »

lucozade wrote: post #221
sinwave wrote: post #207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

wait - are they actually building aircraft carriers??

You heard it first on HN. Anyway the premise is wrong. An Apple carrier would be much more expensive than anyone else's carrier. And as you'll only be able to get it in white, silver or gold, you might have some camouflage problems.

It also probably wouldn't be waterproof, unless they fix it with a software update :P

Re: Apple Reports Record First Quarter Results

#280

Post by jsprogrammer »

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…

I think that might be a very misleading way to think about it. Sure, maybe Apple could buy 12 nuclear carriers (Although I think inflation may have changed that number a bit. [Also, your $6.2 billion figure is apparently sourced from Fox News[1][2][3], which (of course) doesn't cite a direct source for that claim, only an author credit to Associated Press[4]]), but assuming they did, all they have is 12 huge hunks of metal that they need to store somewhere.

Oh, were you thinking of a fleet of operational carriers that can deploy world-wide dozens of the most highly armed and agile vehicles within 14 days?

Maybe you were just thinking of putting those carriers out on display in the southern bay? I don't know, maybe.

But, if you were thinking about the (apparent) price paid for what the US actually bought (what your numbers are supposedly based on), you need to include the ongoing costs for operating and maintaining such a fleet. According to your sources (Wikipedia), the US Navy had a $171.x billion budget in 2010[5][6][7][8] (according to the same source, this is now $147.69 billion for 2015). I zoomed around the infographic more and found that Operations & Maintenance run $40.xxx billion this year. Sure, you can drop it down some to get rid of the non-carrier vessel maintenance, but this is the limit of the graphics breakdown of the budget. There's another $3x.xxx billion in there (pan north a bit) for "personnel" costs. We'll be generous and say that[$7x.xxx billion]'s an upper limit on the annual cost to run the carriers as you are likely imaging. If Apple keeps it up, they will be able to pay for the first year's costs before next quarter's earnings.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_George_H.W._Bush_(CVN-77)#c... [2] http://www.webcitation.org/6DBeItQye [3] http://www.foxnews.com/story/2009/01/10/aircraft-carrier-nam... [4] http://www.ap.org

[5] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Armed_Forces#cite... [6] http://www.wallstats.com/deathandtaxes/ [7] http://www.timeplots.com/ [8] http://www.timeplots.com/collections/catalog/products/death-...

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