The best quarter on record by 17% and they raise the dividend by a paltry 4%... sigh
Apple reports second quarter results
91–100 of 112 posts
Re: Apple reports second quarter results
#92Earlier quoted context omitted.
The capital return program was a massive own goal in my humble opinion. It will work for now but soon Apple will go through their Intel years because they spent too long sweating their (admittedly incredible) assets. Something like Harmony OS is going to eat their lunch and they will only have themselves to blame.
I imagine you're saying the capital return program is a mistake because they should reinvest the money in R&D etc. I think the issue is there's diminishing returns to spending, and in some cases it can be outright negative. For example, one major thing you can do with money is hire more people. Hiring more people than you can handle is a great way to grind everything to a halt. You're basically making a bet when you…
"For example, one major thing you can do with money is hire more people."
Something else you can do is buy companies.
Re: Apple reports second quarter results
#93Earlier quoted context omitted.
“They need their own fabs” is a very current events-biased read of the situation. You can easily end up like AMD or Intel spending years with your own fab that’s uncompetitive. One of the best things that ever happened to AMD was spinning off their fabs. Intel only recently righted their ship after spending years with fabs that couldn’t keep up with competition, and even Panther Lake still contains some TSMC silicon.…
You can easily end up like AMD or Intel spending years with your own fab that’s uncompetitive. You could. Or you could have no fab and no supply of chips for your business.
Yeah, one of those two bad scenarios sinks a corporation the other is a tax write off.
Re: Apple reports second quarter results
#94Short version: Reported quarterly revenue: ~$111 billion, so a 17% year-over-year increase. Diluted earnings per share: ~$2. 22% increase compared to the same quarter last year. Operating cash flow: surpassed $28 billion. Record for a March quarter. iPhone: Record March-quarter revenue of ~$57 billion, heavily supported by demand for the iPhone 17. Services: Hit an all-time high revenue record of ~$31 billion. Capita…
"More generally, we're seeing a transition in their financials away from hardware dependence." Nonsense. They make 72% of their revenue from hardware, and without those hardware sales, the Services category would be nil.
Yes, but their hardware growth might have "ceilinged", services is likely where future growth will be.
Re: Apple reports second quarter results
#95Earlier quoted context omitted.
I wish they’d stop doing buy backs and invest 100B in R&D … imagine what they could do in battery tech or otherwise.
They really should have built a car. It'd make them leaders in batteries. It'd keep America at the forefront of EVs. Huge disappointment.
Not sure we need yet another unaffordable luxury car brand.
Re: Apple reports second quarter results
#96Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's worth considering (IMO, anyway) that users don't want to use apps that use third party billing, too. That's my own preference, I avoid them and look for something that lets me pay via the App Store instead. In the cases where I can't do that (Disney, Netflix), I just leave a bad review and send feedback on their website asking to pay in the app.
Among even non-tech people I know, it's now common knowledge to check on the web if you can get a discount without the Apple tax before doing an in-app purchase. I think most people care more about saving 10-30% on their purchases than the convenience.
Interesting, I haven't heard of people doing that. I just asked my non-tech sisters and neither of them do it, but they do pay for the big media apps outside of Apple since there's no choice there.
For me, I much prefer the convenience of having all my subscriptions centrally located in the App Store, and, more importantly, being able to cancel them with one click there too.
Re: Apple reports second quarter results
#97Earlier quoted context omitted.
Apple almost certainly has entire production lines at TSMC that they effectively own. I don’t really think bringing chip fabrication in-house has any immediate benefit for them. We can observe with Apple’s pricing staying stable that they have some of the best supplier arrangements in the industry.
Apple doesn't own TSMC. TSMC is putting Apple in the back burner in favor of Nvidia and other high margin companies. They are literally being limited by TSMC (as well as the DRAM makers) because they don't have their own fabs.
It isn’t that simple: Apple made strategic investments in TSMC, and actually fronted the money for many of the fabs making their chips.
Re: Apple reports second quarter results
#98Earlier quoted context omitted.
"More generally, we're seeing a transition in their financials away from hardware dependence." Nonsense. They make 72% of their revenue from hardware, and without those hardware sales, the Services category would be nil.
Yes, but their hardware growth might have "ceilinged", services is likely where future growth will be.
Services is really just Google's baksheesh plus corrosive game mechanics. Without the hardware, there is no Services. Hence Apple will always be dependent on maintaining a large lead with their devices.
Re: Apple reports second quarter results
#99If they’re going hard in on services maybe they’ll finally go up against Microsoft 365 and Google Workspace, proper. Between the two someone needs to disrupt it with a cheaper stripped down alternative (from a big player) because the prices are going through the roof.
I was floored to find out recently that the web interface for iCloud (iCloud.com) has no way to edit a spreadsheet in-browser. I thought for sure they’d have browser based Numbers at this point, but nope! I think if they haven’t done this yet it ain’t gonna happen.
Re: Apple reports second quarter results
#100Earlier quoted context omitted.
I wish they’d stop doing buy backs and invest 100B in R&D … imagine what they could do in battery tech or otherwise.
I never know why this keeps getting downvoted, is HN really full of investors and not engineers? why do you want buy backs and not R&D?
Because Apple dropped 10 billion on car research which was an apparent fail.
Far simpler and cheaper to snipe startups where you know you are getting a proven product. That comes with a fresh batch of engineers in most cases who specialize in the tech so you skip a lot of the hiring/training steps.
If I had an R&D request it would be they train some machine models on their developer feedback and public feedback databases to give some guidance on where the real holes are and what people are actually hoping for.
I certainly never wanted a car from them… the whole Apple business model is reducing the moving parts to reduce product failures and a car would be a huge regression.