Apple earned a profit of USD 818 million on revenue of USD 5.41 billion for its fiscal third-quarter ending June 30, the company announced Wednesday. Apple sold 1.764 million Macs and 9.815 million iPods during the quarter, and 270000 iPhones in that product’s first 30 hours of sales. In addition, Apple has released a new Leopard build.
I was at an Apple store around a week ago, and there was literally a line out the door just to get into the store. It was jam packed with people and mostly everyone was waiting to play with that damn iPhone. Yes, I played with it. What can I say. I just hope Apple doesn’t become the next Microsoft otherwise we will be much worse off.
Edited 2007-07-25 22:31
Virtually all of Apple’s products aim for the premium market. From computers to phones and music players, Apple has chosen the upper market. Thus, the chances of Apple becoming the next Microsoft are slim to none.
Microsoft has a different philosophy. Microsoft wants volume rather than a small but profitable niche (although with what they charge for Vista, you’d think otherwise). This is why Microsoft doesn’t sell its own computers and has such an astronomical slice (whole pie?) of the market.
Of course, monopolies are hardly ever good for the consumer, but it should be noted that being a monopoly in itself is not evil. The problem is when that monopoly uses immoral and illegal tactics to keep its iron-clad grip on the market. Microsoft has repeatedly done this. Think BeOS, Netscape and SUN.
Both Netscape and Sun blundered. You forget that Microsoft were not a monopoly when Netscape were at their prime. Sure IE bundling was a big attack on Netscape, but Netscape still failed to wise up and get with the times. They still don’t get it, even now.
As for BeOS, I don’t know much about what happened there. Otherwise, I would say that Microsoft got where they are through a lack of competent and aggressive enough competition to prevent Microsoft’s own share-grab tactics. It’s war out there, Microsoft were only doing what any other company would have done if they had had the right skills and direction.
While I agree with what you say for the most part (I do believe bundling IE was anticompetitive), I do not think it’s fair to say that Netscape *still* does not get it…
Netscape is less than a shell, a shadow, of it’s former self. It’s been gutted and deformed by AOL. Heck, I wouldn’t be shocked if everyone from the old days was completely gone…
Netscape NOW is not the Netscape of before…When the old Netscape died, in many ways, part of the internet died with it. A certain era. A spirit. A feeling. Well, it may be entirely subjective, but that’s how I felt.
Maybe I’m not old enough. IE was a breath of fresh air to me, compared to Netscape. There was too much bloat and sponsor-added-cruft in Netscape.
They already had a PC desktop near-monopoly. That was the whole point, really: MS used its dominant position in the desktop OS market to shut competitors out of the browser market.
In a nutshell, OEMs couldn’t sell BeOS pre-installed without losing their Windows licences. The OEMs could not afford to lose the bulk of their business, and so no one sold BeOS boxes.
There’s a good article about it here:
http://www.kuro5hin.org/story/2001/10/23/13219/110
It’s not that simple. There are laws that prevent companies from using their dominant position in a market to gain unfair advantages in other markets.
Capitalism can only function if it is carefully regulated, as monopolies are aberrations in a free-market model. Basically, monopolies are detrimental to having a level playing field – one of the basic principles of capitalist theory.
Edited 2007-07-26 03:44
G.K. Chesterton’s distributism is a good counter-balance to unbridled capitalism:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Distributism
“Too much capitalism does not mean too many capitalists, but too few capitalists.”
“You forget that Microsoft were not a monopoly when Netscape were at their prime. Sure IE bundling was a big attack on Netscape, ”
Don’t you see the point? Microsoft *was* a monopoly these days, with it’s OS! And it used it to get a monopoly on the browser market, too.
Sure, Netscape did many things wrong, but IE already took over before it could really be called “superiour” to Netscape. It was just part of every copy of Windows 95.
“Microsoft were only doing what any other company would have done if they had had the right skills and direction.”
I would agree to a certain extend to that one, although one should not miss that many anti-competitive law violations by Microsoft are documented.
In the end, it’s not MS’s single “fault”, but one of the whole industry/market/system, whatever, that things went how they did.
Of course, monopolies are hardly ever good for the consumer, but it should be noted that being a monopoly in itself is not evil. The problem is when that monopoly uses immoral and illegal tactics to keep its iron-clad grip on the market. Microsoft has repeatedly done this. Think BeOS, Netscape and SUN.
PLease people, cut the nonsense. BeOS didn’t die because of Microsoft.
http://cogscanthink.blogsome.com/2006/11/04/jean-louis-gassee-went-…
PLease people, cut the nonsense. BeOS didn’t die because of Microsoft.
exigentsky never said that Microsoft killed BeOS, so your own post is actually nonsense.
However, it’s a fact that they used their monopoly against them.
Actually, from the link you provided, in your own words:
“So basically, BeOS’s killers are Be, Inc. itself, Apple, Microsoft, and JLG.”
Microsoft is in that list, therefore according to that source BeOS *did* die because of Microsoft. It just didn’t die because of Microsoft *alone*.
One could argue that, if MS hadn’t contributed to BeOS’ problems when it did, the OS and the company might have survived. Perhaps not, no one will know. Be Inc. and JLG certainly hurt themselves, but Microsoft’s role in BeOS’ failure shouldn’t be dismissed so easily.
I don’t want to flood the comments section but here goes the evolution of Apple’s earnings and unit sales in these last couple of years:
2007:
• Q3 (ended 06/30/07): revenue $5.41 billion, net profit $818 million, 1.764 million Macs, 09.815 million iPods
• Q2 (ended 03/07/07): revenue $5.26 billion, net profit $770 million, 1.517 million Macs, 10.549 million iPods
• Q1 (ended 12/30/06): revenue $7.10 billion, net profit $1 billion, 1.606 million Macs, 21.066 million iPods
2006:
• Q4 (ended 09/30/06): revenue $4.84 billion, net profit $546 million, 1.610 million Macs, 08.729 million iPods
• Q3 (ended 07/01/06): revenue $4.37 billion, net profit $472 million, 1.327 million Macs, 08.111 million iPods
• Q2 (ended 04/01/06): revenue $4.36 billion, net profit $410 million, 1.112 million Macs, 08.526 million iPods
• Q1 (ended 12/31/05): revenue $5.75 billion, net profit $565 million, 1.254 million Macs, 14.043 million iPods
2005:
• Q4 (ended 10/11/05): revenue $3.68 billion, net profit $430 million, 1.236 million Macs, 06.451 million iPods
• Q3 (ended 07/13/05): revenue $3.52 billion, net profit $320 million, 1.182 million Macs, 06.155 million iPods
• Q2 (ended 03/26/05): revenue $3.24 billion, net profit $290 million, 1.070 million Macs, 05.311 million iPods
• Q1 (ended 12/25/04): revenue $3.49 billion, net profit $295 million, 1.046 million Macs, 04.580 million iPods
2004:
• Q4 (ended 09/25/04): revenue $2.350 billion, net profit $106 million, 836,000 Macs, 02.016 million iPods
• Q3 (ended 06/26/04): revenue $2.014 billion, net profit $61 million, 876,000 Macs, 860,000 iPods
• Q2 (ended 03/27/04): revenue $1.909 billion, net profit $14 million, 749,000 Macs, 807,000 iPods
• Q1 (ended 12/27/03): revenue $2.006 billion, net profit $63 million, 829,000 Macs, 733,000 iPods
Quite impressive in my humble opinion. Too bad I didn’t buy some APPL shares a couple of years ago. 😉
Edited 2007-07-25 22:54
What will be really interesting to see is the up coming holiday quarter to see if they can top last year’s $1 billion.
I’m actually surprised to tsee such a sharp rise since 2004.
I would not say impressive. Their stock price went up 40% because of the iPhone. The iPhone was not a success, because people were looking closer to 500,000 sales. On top of that they gave guidance that they would sell a million iPhones by the end of the quarter, which is slower than expected. They are also selling less iPods than they should be around this time. Add ontop that they had a school special to get people to buy computers and you have what we call an expectation peak, and probably a share price peak.
What exactly are your reference points for what is impressive and how many iPods Apple should be selling?
The iPhone was not a success??? Only by your measure. Does not meeting analysts WAG (wild ass guess) make it a failure?
It has sold more than any “smart” phone in a shorter time.
Steve
P.S. – No I don’t own one, nor do I plan on it…
“The iPhone was not a success”
Unless you care to post some links to the non success of the iPhone that statement is only your opinion.
Indeed, Apple never estimated 500-700,000 iPhones on its first weekend. This was analysts with inflated and unsubstantiated expectations. It only estimated that 1 million iPhones will be sold by the end of this year and 10 million by the next. Considering that they’ve already sold 270,000 during the first two days, they’re well on their way to meeting and surpassing their milestones.
http://business.timesonline.co.uk/tol/business/industry_sectors/tec…
Unless you care to post some links to the non success of the iPhone that statement is only your opinion.
Where have you been lately? Apple went down 6.1% in stock market because sales of iPhone were very disappointing. AT&T reported they sell 146,000 iPhones, much less than 400,000 which was anticipated and very far from 500,000 which were expectations. At end of June, sold units won’t exceed 200,000 and AT&T reported a slowdown in last 10 days, meaning the HALO effect of the iPhone is over.
Of course, no-one could stop you to go around telling iPhone is selling millions of units and it’s a big bang but that’s not true.
This was much anticipated by almost any sane analyst I know of. Plus, EU carriers refused to sell iPhone as it was initially crafted. For example, decision to use EDGE protocol when the world is switching to 3G was just crazy.
<sarcasm>You owe Steve Ballmer some excuses as it ended up just like he said. And I hate Ballmer too but for sure he’s not a fool</sarcasm>
@ christianhgross
Quoting: “I would not say impressive.”
Well I was looking at a one-year chart of Apple and the stock has gone from $60.78 to $137.26 in that short year. I think that says a lot.
Quoting: “The iPhone was not a success, because people were looking closer to 500,000 sales.”
The official figures smashed Motorola’s previous record in the US for the best launch/selling mobile phone with 130,000 Razr’s in 30 days compared to Apple’s 270,000 sold iPhones in roughly 20 to 30 business hours. I would call it a success despite of what ‘people’ expect (that includes the so called ‘analysts’ or ‘people that guess at things’).
For whatever its worth, here are some interesting numbers from a couple of days ago (according to NASDAQ):
Apple’s market value:
$124,336,275,000
Dell:
$66,285,696,520 (53% of Apple’s market value)
HP:
$127,120,872,060 (102% of Apple’s market value)
IBM:
$170,472,987,870 (137% of Apple’s market value)
Lenovo:
$103,648,527,450 (102% of Apple’s market value)
Sony:
$51,347,716,860 (41% of Apple’s market value)
Toshiba:
$29,936,951,100 (24% of Apple’s market value)
Gateway:
$601,763,580 (0.5% of Apple’s market value)
Intel:
$142,635,500,000 (115% of Apple’s market value)
Microsoft:
$298,101,737,280 (240% of Apple’s market value)
AT&T
$1,129,300,000 (0.9% of Apple’s market value)
Verizon:
$122,754,229,920 (98.7% of Apple’s market value)
Motorola:
$41,547,411,050 (33% of Apple’s market value)
So yes, I still would say that this is quite impressive. 🙂
Edited 2007-07-25 23:46
It is impressive. But so were a lot of market price gains in the last years of the dotcom bubble. The question is whether we are seeing a speculative bubble, or whether the current price represents value. To find this out, you simply have to look at price/earnings ratios and price/revenue ratios.
Over time, these never lie. Basically, paying over 20 times earnings for a large company is a bad bet. In the sense that, statistically speaking, over most holding periods, you will lose a lot of money. It is usually paying far too great a premium for growth that is already discounted in the price. The amount lost rises with the size of the multiple, but faster.
Apple is not different. The question you have to answer is, what is the coming good news that is not discounted in the present price? And how sure are you that it is going to happen?
You screwed up AT&T’s Market Cap:
http://money.excite.com/jsp/qt/full.jsp?symbol_search_text=T
$249,705.0 Million (200% of Apple’s market value which will adjust on a daily basis more or less.)
P/E : 20.4546.
T: EPS: 2.65 P/E: 20.4546
MSFT: EPS: 1.49 P/E: 21.3264
AAPL: EPS: 3.58 P/E: 37.6055
Apple’s earnings per share are quite impressive.
I think the thing is – Apple assumed that people on mass would upgrade their existing iPod to an iPhone based on the number of upgrade their iPod each year/cycle. They over estimated – they some how assumed that someone will be happy to pay $300 more for a device for something that over the lifetime of the phone will cost as much as middle priced laptop.
As for share prices, I would never invest into any technology company in the US, until I start seeing prices of shares come down out of the stratosphere, Apple and Google for example, are far over valued for the revenue they bring in. Heck, look at the share price of Telstra Australia, revenue and compare it to Google. Why would *ANYONE* want to invest into a company which gives NO dividends, has share prices that swing from one extreme to another and growth is all based on whether the CEO can hype up the share price to the ceiling and beyond?
“Apple assumed that people on mass would upgrade their existing iPod to an iPhone based on the number of upgrade their iPod each year/cycle”
*Apple* stated they would sell 730,000 iphones this quarter they have sold 270,000 iPhones in the product’s first two days, the last two days of the last quarter, this is lower than some *analysts predicted*
Apple seem pretty much on the Money. So other than an iPhone, or lets be honest an Anti-Apple rant I fail to see your point.
Apple deserve rants but producing an attractive; innovative; expensive; mobile phone/mp3 player/iTunes combo isn’t one of them.
The bottom line is Apple as a *company moves and shakes with innovative new hardware and software products, designs, and not everything they do will work but they seem to be be doing awfully well right now, the days where they settled with Microsoft and the FSF stops ports to their platform are long gone.
Edited 2007-07-26 05:33
Excuse me cyclops but I never said anything bad about Apple, I never said that Apple’s iPhone sales were ‘bad’ or ‘poor’, heck, I didn’t even give figures! All I said is that there are reasons that might have resulted in lower sales that expected – but I *NEVER* said that the sales numbers were in anyway.
I really don’t know how you can turn my post from a sober assessment and class it as a ‘anti-Apple rant’.
Interesting that the number of Macs sold stays fairly constant while their other products go through sharp ups and downs.
You could interpret that as the Mac customer base being small, but composed of dedicated and reliable repeat customers…
Yup, the Mac cult as we like to call them from time to time…
Design houses?
Science & educational labs?
Production studios?
Macs are business machines too (but just not office-based, glorified data-input terminals). It’s not just the home enthusiasts out there. Education, Science and Hollywood all rely on Macs for many tasks.
Doubling in the space of four years is “fairly constant”? That’s over 19% year-over-year growth, well over the 12-16% growth rate of the PC industry as a whole over the past four years.
The numbers I saw were varying +/-25% around a base figure (1.2mil). Well within seasonal and yearly variations, so I didn’t want to jump to that conclusion by comparing the first and last number.
Out of curiousity, where have you seen 12%-16% growth as industry average?
The numbers I saw were varying +/-25% around a base figure (1.2mil).
You know, you can take almost any set of numbers, find the average, call it a constant trend, and say everything else is a fluctuation around that constant. In this case, we have a large fluctuation around the mean: the average quarterly sale (over 3 quarters) in 2007 is 33% above 1.2 m. The average quarterly sale (over 4 quarters) in 2004 is 31% below 1.2 m. Here is a plot of the data: http://www.prism.gatech.edu/~gtg990h/macsales.pdf
Does that look like a fluctuation around a constant to you?
As for the 12%-16% figure: http://www.rtoonline.com/content/article/Jun06/PCShipmentForecast06… (see the table at the end)
Doubling in the space of four years is “fairly constant”?
It hasn’t been constant over 4 years, but that wasn’t what he was trying to say (I think). The Mac numbers have been growing but do so steadily. Within any given year, the numbers of Macs sold in each quarter are not as wildly different as the number of iPods sold.
Take 2006: 1.517 to 1.764 million Macs in two of the quarters, vs 8.729 to 21.066 iPods in two of the quarters. That’s the “sharp ups and downs” he is talking about, contrasted with the steady increase in Mac sales.
Assuming his every comment is meant to denigrate Apple and Macs misses what was in fact an interesting observation on his part.
Are you looking at the same post? In Q3 of 2004, Mac sales were 876,000. Q3 2007 shows 1.764 million Mac sales. This is not “fairly constant” at all, it’s twice as many Macs. It is very impressive growth.
That is pretty high considering right after I bought mine I ran into some people who still had not heard of it. One guy just thought it was a really nice camera.
Browser: Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU like Mac OS X; en) AppleWebKit/420+ (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/3.0 Mobile/1A543a Safari/419.3
Definitely a mod up for posting from an iPhone. First time I’ve seen the UA.
Now these are the kind of statistics I trust.
Edited 2007-07-26 03:21
Who cares. Have a look at the last graph of this page and go get a live.
http://www.wowdailynews.com/pegasus/mac_sales.html
Sorry, wrong link at first go.
Edited 2007-07-26 03:33
Hooray, Apple is doing well. I wonder if it’s a coincidence — I’m a die-hard Windows user / Linux dabbler, and I just ordered a MacBook Pro today. (It doesn’t arrive for a couple weeks, though… grrr..)
Can anyone who has experience being an advanced user of multiple platforms offer any advice on where to turn for a book about switching to the mac which will go beyond the basics? I want to know how the Mac OS works and how to tweak it if necessary (for instance, how to install additional hardware drivers not included in the base OS), not just how to right-click the magical 1-button mouse. (Which, I’m still wondering how that will work out. Hmm.) Thoughts on a book I can read or sites I should visit?
At least optionally, new Mac mouses have left and right buttons, and a center button on the ball/wheel. Mine is wireless.
[edit]
Oops! I just realized you said Macbook Pro. Sorry.
Edited 2007-07-26 06:17
The ‘missing manuals’ have a pretty good reputation; I’d take a look at “Switching to the Mac: The Missing Manual”.
Some online stores will let you browse through some of the chapters so you can get a feel for what you are getting. Or offline stores, if they have it.
You can change an option in mouse preferences so that you can tap with two fingers on the touchpad to right click. You can also drag two fingers on the touchpad to scroll in any direction. It’s simplicity at its finest. Windows touchpad drivers are a nightmare of complications and settings.
Don’t tweak!
As a rule, never tweak your computer, whether you’re on Windows, Linux, or Mac. Its the most painless way to g o in life.
As for drivers, it should rarely be a problem. Its a laptop, so you can really only install USB or Firewire devices anyway, and the OS usually has drivers for those already (except Windows for some reason). For weirder things (TV cards), there is usually an installer on the CD.
The one-button mouse works fine. Just remember to go to preferences and enable the two-finger right-click (one finger on the pad + click = left click, two fingers on the pad + click = right-click).
if you get a new mac with a new mouse you just have to change the default behavior in the mouse preference. Also since you are getting a MBP (which I also just got in June when they upgraded the chipset to Santa Rosa) you can right click by holding two fingers on the pad and clicking on the button. You can scroll up and down and side to side in pages by holding one finger on the pad and using the other to scroll move around the page. I personally like the way the Thinkpad does it where the far right and and the extreme top edge of the pad lets you scroll without having to have afinger on the pad. I also like beign able to tap the pad and have it register as a mouse click, but it works very well nonetheless.
Little tricks like these I picked up on my own, I’m sure there is some obvious things that i don’t know how to do yet. The new MBP rocks, BTW. It boots extremely fast (when it doesn’t need to update something) and its pretty fast. One thing that took me by surprise when I first got, but hasn’t been an issue in while due to some updates, is the heat. This thing gets pretty damn hot and so will the power brick, just a warning so that you won’t be surprised if it happens to you. Just update and it should be okay. If it’s still giving you issues, definitely call Apple.
Edited 2007-07-26 13:35
Regarding the scrolling, you don’t have to move your fingers seperately like that. Just putting two fingers together and moving them on the pad will register as a scroll. I find this much easier than having to go to the edges of the pad to scroll.
Hmm. Maybe that’s why its so jerky when I do it. Cool. I’ll try it when I get home. I like the edges only because I don’t have to hold two fingers down to scroll. Another thing is that the trackpad is way to sensitive, all I have to do is hover my finger over it and it will register. This is a problem because I usually have my hand open when I use the pad (which is rare since I use the mouse). It’s also a little slow to register when I try to do a right click the way I described. It doesn’t work all the time. I type pretty lite and sometimes the keyboard doesn’t register when I type a key. I’m learning to press the buttons a little bit more. These are not complaints, because I’m extremely happy with the MBP. just things Ihave to get used to.
I don’t have an MBP, so I can’t vouch for the trackpad feel. My MacBook behaves quite nicely, though I have a habit of really jabbing the keys. Sometimes I worry about whether the MB’s dainty little keys will take the abuse*, but so far it has held up.
*) My desktop keyboard is one of these: http://www.cherrycorp.com/english/cymotion-line/cymotion-line_maste…
Real key-switches with a lot of resistance make for a real finger workout!
Cool. I have one of those Saitek Eclipse keyboards. The keys are really nice and don’t require a lot to get a key to respond. In-fact I’m surprised sometimes when the keys register as I barely touch them and they still get an output. I like it because its simple, not a lot of buttons, it looks nice, and its well constructed. Kind of like the mac.
Edited 2007-07-26 22:43
“Regarding the scrolling, you don’t have to move your fingers seperately like that. Just putting two fingers together and moving them on the pad will register as a scroll. I find this much easier than having to go to the edges of the pad to scroll”
you have obviously not adjusted to it! trust me… the dual touch track pads on the powerbooks and mac books ROCK! they are way better then sonys, and HPs trackpad!!!!
Oh, I agree. It’s big, comfy, and dual-touch rocks. I thought that was pretty much what I said
Can anyone who has experience being an advanced user of multiple platforms offer any advice on where to turn for a book about switching to the mac which will go beyond the basics?
Amit Singh’s Mac OSX Internals: http://www.amazon.com/Mac-OS-Internals-Systems-Approach/dp/03212785…
Imagine Apple releasing MacOSX on PC. I think it will happen sooner or later.
How can they announce this when they’ve just foisted the universally panned 10.4.10 patch which seems to have broken even that was working and still hasn’t fixed anything from before that wasn’t working