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”
The App Store is almost 9 years old. In that time it has generated about $100 billion in revenues, of which about $70 billion has been passed on to developers and $30 billion was kept by Apple. It’s very likely that running the App Store for 9 years did not cost $30 billion so, if … Continue reading “App Story”
Predicting Apple’s yearly revenues has been fairly easy. The following graph shows the relationship between budgeted spending on Machinery, Equipment, Internal-use software, Land & Buildings and the shipment of iOS device revenues. The company conveniently publishes a full-year forecast of these expenditures every fiscal year so by October we know roughly how sales will be during the … Continue reading “Predictably Profitable, Unpredictably Valuable”
The last quarter of 2016 was Apple’s biggest ever. $78.4 billion in revenues. 78.3 million iPhones. Both records. Earnings of $3.361 and cash reached new highs. The growth was modest but Services is now not just the second largest revenue but also the fastest growing, on track to doubling in four years. The reason for … Continue reading “Predicting The Second Quarter”
In its first 10 years, the iPhone will have sold at least 1.2 billion units,1 making it the most successful product of all time. The iPhone also enabled the iOS empire which includes the iPod touch, the iPad, the Apple Watch and Apple TV whose combined total unit sales will reach 1.75 billion units over 10 years. This total … Continue reading “The First Trillion Dollars is Always the Hardest”
