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Apple Reports Record First Quarter Results

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Re: Apple Reports Record First Quarter Results

#111

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.

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.

Re: Apple Reports Record First Quarter Results

#112
post #54
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…

I work for a government, I just contribute to waste. Now I'm even more depressed.

Re: Apple Reports Record First Quarter Results

#113
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 prefer multiples of the Apollo program when discussing Apple's finances. In 1973, NASA reported to Congress that the entire Apollo program cost $25.4 billion ($131.4 billion in 2013). It's useful when quantifying Apple's cash on hand, which is currently > 1x Apollo. With the quarterly revenue, they could probably reenact Apollo 11, since each launch was ~$350 million pre-inflation. If you're only doing one, a lot c…

It's really hard to quantify NASA & military spending though, a lot of that money was already spent by the military on ICBM research, which coincided nicely with trying to send people to space.

To get an accurate number you'd have to take the amount that the US was spending on ICBMs, and ever more accurately how much the Third Reich was spending on research for the V2s etc. After all the US military & NASA benefited immensely from Wernher von Braun and other German scientists that delivered Nazi rocket research to them after WWII.

Re: Apple Reports Record First Quarter Results

#114
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…

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' compared to profits!

How can we not start looking at some of these organizations less as companies, and more as countries?

Re: Apple Reports Record First Quarter Results

#115
post #111

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.

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.

Re: Apple Reports Record First Quarter Results

#116
post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you mean that they're not for sale, which is obvious, or are you saying the true price is different? How different?

That number does not include things like airplanes and people and supplies that you need to actually make a carrier useful.

Staffing and supplies for the staff are cheap enough when you have billions. Let's say you forgo airplanes, how much is it going to cost to get that carrier ready to sail?

Re: Apple Reports Record First Quarter Results

#117

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.

To be precise, that 1 billion tally includes iPads, iPod touches, and Apple TVs. Still obscene profit.

Re: Apple Reports Record First Quarter Results

#118
post #69
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.

If you include FoxConn employees do you also include FoxConn revenue from Apple?

Re: Apple Reports Record First Quarter Results

#119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you mean that they're not for sale, which is obvious, or are you saying the true price is different? How different?

He means that money alone won't get you an operational carrier.

Are you sure that's what he means?

I'm pretty amused at the contrast between your comment and ykl's, who has elaborated on korzun in terms of money alone.

Re: Apple Reports Record First Quarter Results

#120
post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Do you know where we might read more about those Monument Valley numbers? That's an interesting statistic.

I believe I heard those numbers in one of those videos:

http://blog.monumentvalleygame.com/blog/2014/12/3/eight-vide...

But I can't remember exactly when I heard it.

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