Apple’s share price has increased rapidly in the last few weeks. The rise to $600 was swift and broke the pattern of slow growth the the stock was able to obtain over the past few years. The level, however, shouldn’t have been a complete surprise. I think Apple is going to $600…It’s really not that … Continue reading “Apple at $600. Who knew?”
With the launch of the Wii console, Nintendo averted disaster. When the Wii launched in late 2006 Nintendo had been facing the simultaneous attack from the “seventh generation” Xbox 360 which launched a year earlier as well as the PlayStation 3, both of which set as their bases of competition 3D graphics at HD resolutions. Many … Continue reading “The parable of Nintendo”
As the chart below shows, the last quarter (fourth calendar 2011, first fiscal 2012) was robust with 116% earnings growth and 73% net sales growth. I’ve heard many superlatives used to describe it. It is certainly exceptional but it was not as good as the second calendar quarter of 2011. Sales grew faster both in … Continue reading “Estimates for Apple's second fiscal 2012 quarter”
@mastermmik: love how @asymco thinks of everything and everyone as being “hired” to do something. lol via Twitter. Hiring products to do jobs for us is not a difficult cognitive leap to make. But can we extend the metaphor to “everything and everyone?” Aren’t there parts of the human experience that are outside the realm … Continue reading “[Asymconf] What are the jobs that the entertainment industry is hired to do?”
The phenomenon we call business disruption could benefit from a different name. Although it signifies a disturbance or an interruption in an industry, it’s much more than that. The nominal definition I work with is that disruption is the “transfer of wealth in an industry from dominant incumbents to disadvantaged entrants.” It’s a convenient definition … Continue reading “What is disruption and how can it be harnessed?[1]”
This is a reminder that I will be speaking at the Apple Investor Summit on March 15th at the Los Angeles Convention Center. My topic will be Apple’s capital expenditure structure and how that foretells strategy. I will present previously unpublished data and review the likely scenarios for 2012 iOS device production. As I prepared … Continue reading “Reception and workshop at the Apple Investor Summit”
In January I noted that there were more iPads sold by Apple than PCs from HP, the largest PC vendor in the fourth quarter. Including all tablets, this is the distribution of market shares by units shipped. Note the different color palettes for Windows and non-Windows. By the metric of tablets+PC’s Apple appears to be … Continue reading “The value of the OS X monopoly”
Last week I made an attempt to measure the iPhone’s manufacturing cost given new data points from the Foxconn field trip. The post generated a great amount of new knowledge and the feedback was very valuable. The main value to me came from stepping back and looking at the entire cost and value structure for … Continue reading “iPhone sine qua non”
This is a summary view of Apple’s income statement for the fourth quarter of 2009, 2010 and 2011. The full size is 999×893 pixels. Click on image below for full size bitmap. The convention used is to show revenues in the first column, cost of sales in the second followed by operating expenses, taxes … Continue reading “A three year view of Apple's fourth quarter”
The global mobile OS market shares for Q4 shows a continuing (but diminished) leading share. At the end of last year Android’s unit share reached 51% which is down from about 57% during the third quarter. iOS reached 23%, followed by Symbian at 12%, RIM at 9%, Bada at 2.4%, Windows Phone at 1.6% and … Continue reading “The opportunity cost of Windows Phone”
