In June of this year Apple reported that it had paid a total of $100 billion to developers. That is the 18th such figure given in the 10 year history of App Store, making the progress of payments and hence revenue and spending easily trackable. The other regularly reported figure is the business segment revenue … Continue reading “Traffic Acquisition Costs”
I think Lisa Jackson’s presentation at the September 2018 iPhone launch event was perhaps the most interesting and most profound. Lisa Jackson is Apple’s vice president of Environment, Policy and Social Initiatives. Previously, Ms. Jackson served as Administrator of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). In her role at Apple she has been responsible for the transition … Continue reading “Lasts Longer”
Every October, at the end of its fiscal year, Apple files its Form 10K or annual report. In this report the company includes a section titled “Capital Assets” which details expenditures for capital equipment. This is last year’s entry: The Company’s capital expenditures were $14.9 billion during 2017. The Company anticipates utilizing approximately $16.0 billion … Continue reading “Preview of the holiday quarter”
At the latest Apple Summit in Los Angeles the question of Apple’s valuation was foremost on many minds. The illustration I used there to discuss valuation is shown below. It shows the history of revenues (by reported segments) and gross margin for the five largest companies in the world by market capitalization. I have been publishing this … Continue reading “On knowing the value of everything and the price of nothing”
The iMac launched May 6 1998, exactly 20 years ago. It is not the most significant computer to ever exist. It was a clear descendant of the original Mac which established the “all-in-one” desktop computer category. That category, to which it still belongs, is a modest segment. The last time Apple reported portable sales separately … Continue reading “Just in Time”
The following is a transcript of the comments from Tim Cook (CEO) and Luca Maestri (CFO) at Apple’s Q1 2018 Earnings Conference Call February 1, 2018. I color coded my interpretation of the comments into four categories: Grey: Background and promotional commentary Red: Strategy and signals of what management considers important and may include data beyond … Continue reading “Apple Remarks to Investors in FQ1 2018 Earnings Conference Call, Categorized and Annotated”
You’ve probably heard of Jony at Apple but probably don’t know about Johny. Jony is a celebrity executive known as the face of Apple Design. Johny is the executive in charge of custom silicon and hardware technologies across Apple’s entire product line. Under Johny’s leadership, Apple has shipped 1.7 billion processors in more than 20 models … Continue reading “Silicon Valley”
Since the iPhone launched 10 years ago, 1,253,000,000 units have been sold.1 Given that they don’t last forever, we can assume that only the most recent units sold are still in use. If we measure just the units sold in the last 3 years, the total is about 663 million. Rounding down, we can say that … Continue reading “Face Time”
Apple reports second calendar quarter results in about a week. I propose the following estimates: Fiscal Q3 2017: Rev ($B) 45.321 EPS ($) 1.62 iPhone (units) 41 million iPad (units) 9.8 million Mac (units) 4.35 million Watch (units) 2.5 million Services ($) 7.2 billion Other products ($) 2.6 billion Gross margin (%) 38.4 The revenue … Continue reading “Estimating Apple’s Second Calendar Quarter”
From the way Apple reports its revenues you might think that the company has several operating segments. There are the iPhone, the Mac, the iPad for which units and revenues are reported. Then there are Services and Other Products for which we have revenues only. Services is a collection of all non-hardware revenues and is (finally) being recognized as … Continue reading “Other Products”
