Apple profits soar 77% on record sales of 3.47 million Macs - Page 3

And I sincerly doubt Apple or Steve Jobs is concerned in the least. Everyone else can focus on market share and unit volume, I'm happy that Apple focuses on turning out a product with a premium user experience that leads to people being willing to buy a premium product that leads to premium products.

Seems like a much more viable strategy - make a good product that people want to use and market share and profit take care of themselves

Your not going to get anywhere with him. He sees no problem with large debt loads either

I for one am extremely happy Apple is being fiscally conservative - and who knows what they have up their sleeve or in their long term planning. Who is anyone to question if they have more than enough cash for future expansion - we have no clue what they are planning nor where they are going.

But arm chair quarterbacking on a fine Tuesday is great Internet sport!

I find myself wondering what Apple intend doing with this money if they are not planning to return some of it to shareholders. I'm quite happy to accept the idea that holding a nice cash pile is sensible, especially as we come through one of the worst economic downturns in history, but given they are adding to the cash pile at a rate of $4bn per quarter, how much is enough?

Maybe they are planning on doing something with it (and I actually hope they are, given Apple's incredible ability to change ideas into great products), but doing something with $4bn (the amount they generate per quarter) is actually a pretty huge deal, so they could do some major things without actually going at the cash pile.

What I'd love to see them do is start manufacturing their own stuff. I've been critical of suggestions in the past about Apple making their own chips but hell, a mega-fab is about $5bn so it's not beyond the realms of possibility, and given the problems they are having making enough stuff at the moment, you could imagine them wanting to take control of the supply chain themselves.

Maybe they could buy ARM? Given they're designing their own chips now, owning the entire core could be attractive?

The mind boggles at the thoughts of what they could do.

Plus, they can use the Palm OS in Printers and other devices they have. I'm sure someone at HP had the idea of using an embedded iPod touch as a commoditized command and control device in their equipment, dramatically reducing support costs and standardizing their user interface and experience. Well, now they can do it with tech they own 100%.


I predict that HP will make more on their tablets than all the Android hardware producers combined. Sure, there may be more Android tablets shipping in volume, but as Apple has proven there is far more to success than pure volume or market share. It looks like someone at HP may be paying attention to Apple's success and decided they didn't want to get "Microsofted" with Android. I think your analysis is spot-on.

Yes, but where? The US is too over regulated and hostile to manufacturing, and your stuff may just get nationalized if you invest a bunch in some place like China. Component shortages are now Apple's biggest enemy, not competitors. They simply can't produce products fast enough, and there is no indication it's going to change any time soon.


Indeed!

It's capitalism that's amazing.

Oh, that's a shame.

Yes, it's an astounding marketplace for devs. Absolutely incredible.

Well, that's not quite accurate. Skype, MagicJack, Ooma, and others have all already given us that choice. FaceTime, when implemented across devices outside the Apple product line AND on cell service, WiFi, WiMax and whatever else... then we will be free from the previous restraints to open communications everywhere.

Realistically it depends on what Apple has planned for its use. They may well have some large purchase they are saving for (like say some slowly devaluing property in the state of Washington *wink* jk!) or some leading edge technologies that they can't currently produce in-house (as they did with Fingerworks - for example).

They may well be prepping for pushing the paradigm shift even further into technology. You just never know.

Now if you want to unload those Apple shares of yours I'll cut you a deal to take them off your hands for a tiny loss, but the offer is only for a very short time....

John Dvorak has stated he didn't that entire quote as given, people have added extra stuff to it

The Mac thing is a stunning surprise!

You'd think Apple became the iThing company and got out of the computer business altogether, but BAM! They sold more Macs than any quarter in history!

Keep in mind Apple's taken maybe 10% of US market share and I think is still less than 5% internationally. I still think they have a lot of room to grow.

You know I'd have said the same about the likelihood of manufacturing in the US until a year ago, but in the past 12 months Global Foundries have announced a huge new fab in New York state and Samsung are dropping a lot of money expanding in Austin, Texas, so there is scope to do chip manufacture in the US.

Whilst there are hurdles that don't exist elsewhere, but that has to be balanced by the fact that Americans are very productive. The Chinese may work for little money (though who knows how much longer that will last for) but if you hire three people to work in a Chinese fab vs. one in a US fab, the costs are not too much different.......

I think if you look at PC sales over the last several years you see netbook sales stripping away regular PC sales - mostly desktops and of course the more expensive laptops. So you end up with a double hit as it were - you are not only NOT retaining PC sales at the higher price points, but you are getting a significant margin less from the netbook class as well. The unit sales are growing in PC sales due to increasing or incremental prosperity in developing countries where the standard of living increases, allowing more discretionary spending on things like electronics, but because there are netbooks to be had, the margins cramp down considerably.

Apple on the other hand doesn't chose to join the race to the bottom, but keeps its margins intact by delivering to the higher end market segment, and guarding its profitability. In Apple's case slow growth is not only more sustainable, but it is desirable as well. Sharp increases in demand force ramp up and investment in manufacturing, but any subsequent market down-turn leaves the company with undepreciated overhead and excess staffing. Which depletes profitability.

LMAO Thanks!

Wow, and to think the only people who buy Apple products are idiots, uninformed, and most of all sheep. I am sure many other companies wish they had a sheep farm like Apple.

Baaaaa

Apple has paid dividends before, and they can do so again. At some point, if their cash hoard continues to increase, and they don't seem to be using it, shareholder dissatisfaction will become so great, like it did with MS a few years back, that they will have to do something, like it or not.

Let's get something straight about manufacturing in the US. It was only a month or two ago that China exceeded the US in manufacturing. The US was the largest manufacturing nation until then. The difference between us and the Chinese will remain small for a bit of time.

What has happened is that most low value manufacturing moved there. Now most things are made there too. But plenty of things are still made here.

What he said is that he didn't remember saying "new fangled". Therefor the last sentence is assumed to be incorrect. But it may not be. It certainly sounds like something he would say. Anyone who reads his columns would understand that. But if someone says they don't remember saying something, and it's not libelous or criminal in nature, the press will usually leave it out.

Not all Macs sold are to new users. I think only about 50% sold are to new users. And an increasing Mac sales is not the same as an increasing the actual installed market share for Mac.


So a 30% increase in Mac sales (year to year) is 1M more Macs sold for Apple. Of which only 500,000 are to new users. And 500,000 new users only adds to the install base fractionally. And this is not the same as increasing their percentage of the Mac installed market share because PC's are still selling and adding to their installed market share.

Given the ambiguity of what you wrote, I did the best I could to interpret your meaning. Feel free to elaborate if you feel that I have misinterpreted something.

If I understand you correctly, no, it's not very much. A dividend of a dollar per share would cost Apple roughly three weeks of cash flow, at the current rate of accumulation. This would leave them accumulating cash for the other 49 weeks of the year. The cash mountain continues to grow, only at a slightly slower rate.

How about Apple buy out our government. It is in need of a hostile takeover by somebody who knows how to turn a business around.

I think that Apple is building a pile of cash for the same reasons as many other companies. The Obama administration seems to be quite anti-business. Things like healthcare and this new equal paycheck whatever can potentially cost companies like Apple billions. I heard a report recently that large US companies have (I think the number was) a couple trillion dollars stashed in cash. The primary reason for this according to the CEOs/CFOs of these companies is uncertainty about government regulations and taxes.

Sorry to throw politics into this, but it seems as if the current administration is truly stifling the economic recovery with all of this massive government growth. US businesses appear to have lots of capital on hand that COULD be used to get the economy moving again and yet they sit on the money rather than hiring or expanding out of fear of what the regulatory and tax environment is going to look like.

OK. Off the soapbox.

That's ridiculous. Apple already supplies healthcare to all its employees - it would hardly be affected by the new healthcare regulations - in fact, if the new healthcare regulations bring down the overall cost of healthcare because more people are insured, it could actually reduce (or limit growth) in Apple's healthcare costs over the long term. The new healthcare bills are mostly going to impact smaller businesses - those that offer only very limited or no health care today, not larger ones.

And all Equal Paycheck is is a restating of the Equal Pay Act of 1963 - that you must have a reason if you pay less by gender for equal work. However I will admit that while the intent of this law is fine, it's impractical because companies can still generally get around it by changing job titles, descriptions, etc.

Corporations in the U.S. are paying the LEAST amount of corporate taxes that they've ever paid in recent history. I can't seem to find total numbers for more recent years, but in 2000, corporations paid $207 billion in taxes and by 2003, they paid only $132 billion. Neither Exxon-Mobil (which recorded a $42.5 billion profit), nor GE (which reported $10.5 billion in pre-tax income), paid ANY Federal corporate taxes in 2009. Do you really think this makes sense? U.S. corporations paid far higher corporate taxes during the Reagan administration than they're paying now (as are high income people).

So stop believing the garbage spouted by conservative media. Obama could support every idea Reagan and Bush ever came up with and they'd STILL be against him.

US businesses aren't spending because they have no guts - they're filled with executives who only know how to manage from quarter to quarter and are primarily concerned about the stock price because that's what their absurdly large bonuses (or stock options) are based upon.

Apple has proven that you can make tons of money in a very tough economy. I'm a supporter of Apple and I own the stock, but even I thought they would take a big hit in this economy. I'm still surprised that people are shelling out for their products.

moved new address soon
off topic post
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If Apple's customers are sheep, then the whole world is New Zealand.

No, it makes no sense. It's also untrue.

Federal corporate income taxes in the US are the second-highest in the world. That fact and enormous near-term uncertainty regarding regulations and unprecedented government intrusion on all levels are the biggest reasons businesses in the US are suffering, causing massive unemployment and widespread misery. It's no wonder that XOM and GE invest everywhere but in the US.

AAPL pays an effective tax rate of 30%. That's insane.

By the way, XOM paid the most taxes of any company in the world, its liability for 2009 has not yet been determined, and GE is getting audited for several of the past years.

The top 5% income earners in the US pay 50% of all taxes, and the top 1% pay more than the bottom 95%. This also makes no sense. Unfortunately it is true.

(My source is not the "conservative media" (talk about an oxymoron) but the non-partisan National Taxpayers Union and The Tax Foundation.)
Turning this insanity around will enable businesses to expand, hire, and prosper. They'll pay more income taxes than ever, just like in the past. Surely you'll agree - after all, you said it yourself:

Who is John Gault?