I'm worried about about what is happening today, not what might or might not happen in the future.
When are you going to understand that Apple doesn't really give a rats-a** what the others do?
The very fact that they can not get enough components from multiple suppliers, paying in CASH I might add... does not leave any room for any other tablet manufacturer to produce any more than Apple does.
Meaning... even if the people DID want a different tablet, the component supply bottle-neck would be the same... or even worse. Since said product would have to be more expensive than the iPad, and the producer would have to sell the tablet at a loss to compete. I don't see too many producers taking that chance, because the "complete eco-system" does not exist for their OS of choice (yet?).
When even Apple, with their great planning and closed-loop system, fails to anticipate demand... the other guys are just doing a plain ol' crap-shoot. Can't see their shareholders letting them play that game too long!
Most important point of the entire earnings call: MASSIVE BACKLOG! And ya know what the majority of that is? The enterprise. I wouldn't be surprised to hear 20-25 million for that segment alone.
Which puts my prediction and a few others around here right on track:
***60 million 2011 (roughly 60/40 consumer/enterprise...possibly 50/50).
*** if Apple and the world's component suppliers can make that many.
You either have too much supply or too little. Don?t say they should produce exactly the number that is needed. The goal is to maximize profits. In a simplified scenario that actually means you don?t over or under produce, but in a complex scenario there are many issues with bulk components and manufacturing, and the reality that you will never sell exactly as many as you need.
You can?t create these products in a vacuum. Apple is doing volume and growth that no one else has achieved in CE. They have shipped almost 200M iOS-based devices since mid 2007. If their factories are at full tilt what do expect them to do besides get more manufacturing going? Do you know this takes time? Should Apple spend billions on a new plant just to make one more unit, 100 more units, 1000 more units pre day? That doesn?t even account for components supply. There are tipping points that make this viable and unviable. We don?t know if that isn?t a major issue, it could very well be constrained component supplier(s) and no option to add or replace them any time soon.
You mentioned that you?re getting tired of supply issues thus implying that Apple isn?t producing enough to meet demand. Obviously that is true, but where is the proof they can produce more? Where is the proof that they are losing more money than producing too many, which is the flipside of your statement.
Apple growth is great. Their revenue is great. Their profits are great. I see no slowing down at this point. I don?t care if there are some lines for the iPad right now, I do care that Apple is not faltering and the future of the company is upward. I?m a happy shareholder.
+++1000+++ Absolutely and well stated.... as always you eloquent b*****
As an Apple shareholder, I'm really getting tired of these supply issues. I'm not sure if Tim Cook is being way too careful about over-production or what, but if he continues like this it's going to bite Apple in the ass.
Apple is damn lucky that Motorola, RIM and Samsung have stumbled so badly with their tablets. If they hadn't you would have had tons of people flocking to them, the same as with the Android phones.
Tim, get your act together on supply!
Tim is the very BEST Operations guy in the world! He is to logistics what Jobs is to product(s) vision and direction.
Tim actually addressed this during the CC when asked how production could go from 7M+ last quarter to less than 5 this quarter. His simple answer was something to the effect that multi-million production transitions are NON TRIVIAL with a delicate balancing act of product announcement, retooling, inventory draw-down and new product ramping.... a VERY difficult dance indeed.
He does this better than ANYONE and has for YEARS. He went on to say they DO have the manufacturing capabilities in place and are confident of achieving previous run rates and then some.
This is why they are NOT delaying any country roll-outs and, in fact, continue on a torrid expansion of distribution world wide.
I know of NO ONE I would rather have running my operations than TC....do you??
Bottom line, I predict 9+ million units sold in Q3.
BTW, did you notice that (just yesterday afternoon right before their earnings announcement) the lead time on new iPad2 orders from Apple's site fell to 1-2 weeks from 3-4.
So, do not worry grasshopper and let's hope TC stays with Apple for the rest of his career.
.....the iPad has the mother of all backlogs that we’re working very, very hard to get out to customers as quickly as we can.
Product transitions are never simple, and as you can probably appreciate, we are in a position that we have to call them for many, many weeks in advance, in terms of how many of the current product we want to produce and the dates at which we will announce the new product.
We drew the channel down on the original iPad by 570,000 units during the quarter, and we added at the end of the quarter 170,000 of the new iPad 2s, although most of that was in transit at the end of the quarter. And so the net reduction was 400,000 and so our sell through was above five million for the quarter. And again, this has to be planned quite a ways in the future.
Just to remind you, we sent out an invitation to the [iPad 2 launch] event toward the end of February, we had the event in early March, we placed the unit on sale in the United States on March 11, and our quarter ended about 2 weeks thereafter. So, there was some expectation of a new product, and we would have obviously factored that into our thinking about the product transition, as we planned the number of the original unit to build.
So I think the key point here is that I’m extremely pleased with the progress we’ve been making on the manufacturing ramp. We have gotten off to a materially better start and produced a lot more units than we did on the original ramp of the first iPad, and we’re so confident with our ability to supply that we’ve already put on 25 additional countries at the end of March, and we’ll be placing on 13 more next week, and we’ll do even more as we step through the quarter.
Comments
I'm worried about about what is happening today, not what might or might not happen in the future.
When are you going to understand that Apple doesn't really give a rats-a** what the others do?
The very fact that they can not get enough components from multiple suppliers, paying in CASH I might add... does not leave any room for any other tablet manufacturer to produce any more than Apple does.
Meaning... even if the people DID want a different tablet, the component supply bottle-neck would be the same... or even worse. Since said product would have to be more expensive than the iPad, and the producer would have to sell the tablet at a loss to compete. I don't see too many producers taking that chance, because the "complete eco-system" does not exist for their OS of choice (yet?).
When even Apple, with their great planning and closed-loop system, fails to anticipate demand... the other guys are just doing a plain ol' crap-shoot. Can't see their shareholders letting them play that game too long!
Most important point of the entire earnings call: MASSIVE BACKLOG! And ya know what the majority of that is? The enterprise. I wouldn't be surprised to hear 20-25 million for that segment alone.
Which puts my prediction and a few others around here right on track:
***60 million 2011 (roughly 60/40 consumer/enterprise...possibly 50/50).
*** if Apple and the world's component suppliers can make that many.
You either have too much supply or too little. Don?t say they should produce exactly the number that is needed. The goal is to maximize profits. In a simplified scenario that actually means you don?t over or under produce, but in a complex scenario there are many issues with bulk components and manufacturing, and the reality that you will never sell exactly as many as you need.
You can?t create these products in a vacuum. Apple is doing volume and growth that no one else has achieved in CE. They have shipped almost 200M iOS-based devices since mid 2007. If their factories are at full tilt what do expect them to do besides get more manufacturing going? Do you know this takes time? Should Apple spend billions on a new plant just to make one more unit, 100 more units, 1000 more units pre day? That doesn?t even account for components supply. There are tipping points that make this viable and unviable. We don?t know if that isn?t a major issue, it could very well be constrained component supplier(s) and no option to add or replace them any time soon.
You mentioned that you?re getting tired of supply issues thus implying that Apple isn?t producing enough to meet demand. Obviously that is true, but where is the proof they can produce more? Where is the proof that they are losing more money than producing too many, which is the flipside of your statement.
Apple growth is great. Their revenue is great. Their profits are great. I see no slowing down at this point. I don?t care if there are some lines for the iPad right now, I do care that Apple is not faltering and the future of the company is upward. I?m a happy shareholder.
+++1000+++ Absolutely and well stated.... as always you eloquent b*****
Guidance of $23 billion is a 7 percent sequential decline, uncharacteristic for Apple.
[ View this article at AppleInsider.com ]
Why is this?
Originally Posted by peter236 View Post
When they say China sales of $5 billion is 10% of Apple, I don't quite get it. Their total sales is $24.67 billion for the quarter.
Good question. I didn’t get that either.
Edit: Opps..already answered above.
Exactly!
As an Apple shareholder, I'm really getting tired of these supply issues. I'm not sure if Tim Cook is being way too careful about over-production or what, but if he continues like this it's going to bite Apple in the ass.
Apple is damn lucky that Motorola, RIM and Samsung have stumbled so badly with their tablets. If they hadn't you would have had tons of people flocking to them, the same as with the Android phones.
Tim, get your act together on supply!
Tim is the very BEST Operations guy in the world! He is to logistics what Jobs is to product(s) vision and direction.
Tim actually addressed this during the CC when asked how production could go from 7M+ last quarter to less than 5 this quarter. His simple answer was something to the effect that multi-million production transitions are NON TRIVIAL with a delicate balancing act of product announcement, retooling, inventory draw-down and new product ramping.... a VERY difficult dance indeed.
He does this better than ANYONE and has for YEARS. He went on to say they DO have the manufacturing capabilities in place and are confident of achieving previous run rates and then some.
This is why they are NOT delaying any country roll-outs and, in fact, continue on a torrid expansion of distribution world wide.
I know of NO ONE I would rather have running my operations than TC....do you??
Bottom line, I predict 9+ million units sold in Q3.
BTW, did you notice that (just yesterday afternoon right before their earnings announcement) the lead time on new iPad2 orders from Apple's site fell to 1-2 weeks from 3-4.
So, do not worry grasshopper and let's hope TC stays with Apple for the rest of his career.
From http://www.macworld.com/article/1593...ranscript.html
.....the iPad has the mother of all backlogs that we’re working very, very hard to get out to customers as quickly as we can.
Product transitions are never simple, and as you can probably appreciate, we are in a position that we have to call them for many, many weeks in advance, in terms of how many of the current product we want to produce and the dates at which we will announce the new product.
We drew the channel down on the original iPad by 570,000 units during the quarter, and we added at the end of the quarter 170,000 of the new iPad 2s, although most of that was in transit at the end of the quarter. And so the net reduction was 400,000 and so our sell through was above five million for the quarter. And again, this has to be planned quite a ways in the future.
Just to remind you, we sent out an invitation to the [iPad 2 launch] event toward the end of February, we had the event in early March, we placed the unit on sale in the United States on March 11, and our quarter ended about 2 weeks thereafter. So, there was some expectation of a new product, and we would have obviously factored that into our thinking about the product transition, as we planned the number of the original unit to build.
So I think the key point here is that I’m extremely pleased with the progress we’ve been making on the manufacturing ramp. We have gotten off to a materially better start and produced a lot more units than we did on the original ramp of the first iPad, and we’re so confident with our ability to supply that we’ve already put on 25 additional countries at the end of March, and we’ll be placing on 13 more next week, and we’ll do even more as we step through the quarter.
All emphasis is mine.