I recently posted a comparison between the profit capture of phone vendors in 2007 and the most recent quarter: The idea was to show what a disruption looks like. A phenomenon where an entrant with none of the advantages of incumbency takes the profits away from companies privileged with ideal market access and knowledge. The … Continue reading “Pac-Man”
comScore published the latest data regarding US smartphone installed base. To summarize: Penetration reached 37.4%, an increase of 2.9 million or 1.24 points of percentage. Approximately 650k consumers switched from non-smart to smartphones every week during September Based on trailing average of six months’ growth, 50% penetration will be reached by end of September 2012, … Continue reading “The US smartphone landscape”
Samsung no longer reports mobile phone shipments. The company’s phone market performance reporting is limited to the following: Shipment : High-20%↑YoY (low-20%↑QoQ) ASP : Slight increase QoQ As the company did not report volumes or ASP last quarter either, the QoQ (Quarter on Quarter) growth estimates are almost useless. The only fragment that might be useful … Continue reading “Estimating Samsung's smartphone mix”
Analysts have to count things in order to measure value. It sounds easy but it can be tricky. As I pointed out with PCs vs. iPads, if you count an iPad as a PC you can get into a lot of trouble with your clients. But if you don’t you end up directing them away … Continue reading “The other tablets”
Last quarter the iPad had unit growth of 166% with revenue growth of 146%. The iPad is selling more than twice the (also rapidly growing) Mac. The two product lines are shown below:
Apple’s Cash and Marketable Securities has been the focus of attention for many year now. It has now reached $81.6 billion equivalent to a value of $86.8 per diluted share. Currently each share is worth about $393 making the enterprise value $306/share or 11 times last twelve month’s earnings. The division of liquid cash and … Continue reading “Putting capital to work”
In his recent posts Horace took a look at Apple’s fixed assets and their development over the recent years. He also tested the hypotheses that Apple is making investments into machinery & equipment on which iOS devices are produced by overlaying iOS volumes with preceding changes in property, plant and equipment (PP&E). The question that … Continue reading “Are Apple’s investments in PP&E extraordinary?”
Dan and Horace talk about Apple’s quarter with an eye toward the operational commitments being made. We cover the cost of store openings, data center purchases and machinery used in manufacturing iOS devices. By tracking capital expenses we can get a clue about where Apple wants to go. This episode is sponsored by Sourcebits, Handelabra … Continue reading “5by5 | The Critical Path #10: The Means of Production”
Last quarter I was wrong because I thought Apple would throttle production of the iPhone 4 in the fourth quarter post-launch. “The reason growth would moderate was that Apple slowed production of the old model in order to switch out to the new model–we saw the same thing happen with the slowdown in iPad 1 … Continue reading “How did I get the iPhone number so wrong (part II)”
In the last two posts (How much does an Apple store cost?, The down payment on iCloud) I discussed two line items in the PP&E asset class on Apple’s Balance Sheet. In isolation, the data is interesting as it gives us an idea of the cost structure of stores and facilities being developed to sustain its current … Continue reading “How much do Apple's factories cost?”
