It's not an Apple sales miss, it's an analysts' forecast miss. Don't feed the analysts' pretension that if their forecast is wrong, it's the subject company's fault.
Exactly! It's hard to conceive of an industry that can be manipulated more than the stock market. The misleading and inaccurate information prior to results led Apple to TANK bigtime prior to the Q1 call - great time for those who cause the market to "crash" like that to pick up a few shares. Call me a cynic, but people in general ARE greedy!
Sorry, the analysts “missed” in their predictions. Apple did not.
And when you’re grabbing billions of dollars in profit hand over fist, why are units still considered an important barometer?
You have failed to understand what Apple's current business strategy is and how they have grown their Services revenue into a separate category that now makes up 10% of the company's overall revenue, second only to iPhone sales.
Unit sales is a barometer of Services revenue.
The more units Apple sells, the greater the likelihood that Services (apps, iCloud, Apple Music) will grow.
This is a key reason why Apple makes a push to expand their presence in emerging markets (like BRIC: Brazil, Russia, India, China, etc.) by offering lower priced devices (like the iPhone SE). Don't forget that the Apple iOS App Store makes *far* more money than any Android App Store.
Unit sales are important to Apple because other revenue is tied to those units.
Less so for Android handset manufacturers who aren't getting a 30% cut off of Android app sales, song downloads, music subscriptions, etc.
And this is not limited to iPhones.
What do you think Lenovo gets when some Windows user buys a third-party productivity or media editing program? What is Apple's cut from the Mac App Store?
It's not an Apple sales miss, it's an analysts' forecast miss. Don't feed the analysts' pretension that if their forecast is wrong, it's the subject company's fault.
Correct. The real question is, did Apple hit their own guidance numbers?
They did in the just reported fiscal Q1 2018. $88.3B vs upper guidance of $87B.
Hard to say say if they hit numbers already for a future quarter...
The reasoning behind the 13 vs 14 weeks is not correct. The quarter started on 1st of October and ended 31st of December, exactly 92 days as the quarter had in 2016, 2015, ... People have the opportunity to buy the iPhone on every day of the quarter. In e-commerce times like now, people actually do order the iPhone every day of the quarter. The split up per week is artificial and does not reflect the actual spending behaviour of the customers. Explaining the slight drop because of 13 vs 14 weeks is a logical mistake and apparently everybody is just copying it without any critical thinking
I object to this misleading (at best) headline. Had this quarter had the 14 weeks, Apple would have sold 83 million iPhones. AND raised the ASP by one hundred dollars. This would tell anyone with half a brain that Apple was, despite the shorter quarter, on track to selling a record number of phones with a higher selling price and double-digit growth in all markets for the world’s best-selling smartphone.
If investors and analysts are so stupid as to be “spooked” by that, imagine the terrified panic selling the other smartphone makers must be seeing! OH WAIT ...
The iPhone X was supposedly selling poorly, then it was supposedly selling well, now it's selling poorly again? I'm confused? ..wait - never mind. I don't give a rat's patootie about what APPL is trading at, I just care about what phone and laptop I'm going to buy.
Then you can spend your time at apple.com or bestbuy.com rather than Apple Insider
The reasoning behind the 13 vs 14 weeks is not correct. The quarter started on 1st of October and ended 31st of December, exactly 92 days as the quarter had in 2016, 2015, ... People have the opportunity to buy the iPhone on every day of the quarter. In e-commerce times like now, people actually do order the iPhone every day of the quarter. The split up per week is artificial and does not reflect the actual spending behaviour of the customers. Explaining the slight drop because of 13 vs 14 weeks is a logical mistake and apparently everybody is just copying it without any critical thinking
Apple's quarters don't (necessarily) begin and end on the first and last days of months. They begin on Sundays and end on Saturdays.
This past quarter began on October 1st and ended on December 30th. The year ago quarter began on September 25th and ended on December 31st.
The "miss" wasn't just because the quarter was a week shorter, it was because the iPhone X wasn't released until 5 weeks into the quarter! Since iPhone X was the biggest selling iPhone each week from the day it was released, imagine how much higher total iPhone sales for the quarter would have been if there had been 5 more weeks of iPhone X sales......plus an extra 6th week to make up for the extra 2016 holiday quarter. In that case, I'm convinced the holiday 2017 quarter would have destroyed the holiday 2016 quarter in regards to iPhone sales.
The reasoning behind the 13 vs 14 weeks is not correct. The quarter started on 1st of October and ended 31st of December, exactly 92 days as the quarter had in 2016, 2015, ... People have the opportunity to buy the iPhone on every day of the quarter. In e-commerce times like now, people actually do order the iPhone every day of the quarter. The split up per week is artificial and does not reflect the actual spending behaviour of the customers. Explaining the slight drop because of 13 vs 14 weeks is a logical mistake and apparently everybody is just copying it without any critical thinking
Oh look, the resident Apple hater, trying to twist FACTS any way he can to make Apple look bad, we missed you!
Btw guidance of 60-62B would mean YOY revenue increase of 14-17% Wall Street’s 65B would be a 24% increase. I believe the last time Apple reported a YOY increase that high was the March 2015 quarter with 27%. What is Wall Street basing its 65B on?
That there was such thing as a Super Cycle. Which was already priced into the Stock price. Like I said analyst were expecting iPhone X to be sold much more then iPhone 8, hence some unrealistic ASP of $800+. I would actually say the current ASP is pretty damn good even to my expectation, but whether Wall Street likes it is another story.
Dont ask me why, some even attacks me for it. But it is their game. AAPL has been a ridiculously low P/E for a very long time.
P.S- Numbers are meaningless without explanation. I think Six Colour has the transcript which explains in a lot more details.
The "miss" wasn't just because the quarter was a week shorter, it was because the iPhone X wasn't released until 5 weeks into the quarter! Since iPhone X was the biggest selling iPhone each week from the day it was released, imagine how much higher total iPhone sales for the quarter would have been if there had been 5 more weeks of iPhone X sales......plus an extra 6th week to make up for the extra 2016 holiday quarter. In that case, I'm convinced the holiday 2017 quarter would have destroyed the holiday 2016 quarter in regards to iPhone sales.
Apple shifting their quarters to conform to the calendar would make a world of difference and it would also push them to normalize scheduled releases for holiday and back to school promotions. I’ve never been a fan of their choice to have odd quarters.
Comments
Unit sales is a barometer of Services revenue.
The more units Apple sells, the greater the likelihood that Services (apps, iCloud, Apple Music) will grow.
This is a key reason why Apple makes a push to expand their presence in emerging markets (like BRIC: Brazil, Russia, India, China, etc.) by offering lower priced devices (like the iPhone SE). Don't forget that the Apple iOS App Store makes *far* more money than any Android App Store.
Unit sales are important to Apple because other revenue is tied to those units.
Less so for Android handset manufacturers who aren't getting a 30% cut off of Android app sales, song downloads, music subscriptions, etc.
And this is not limited to iPhones.
What do you think Lenovo gets when some Windows user buys a third-party productivity or media editing program? What is Apple's cut from the Mac App Store?
Hard to say say if they hit numbers already for a future quarter...
If you were to rewrite the article you'd have to get rid of the clickbait and nobody in the media cares about anything BUT that.
This past quarter began on October 1st and ended on December 30th. The year ago quarter began on September 25th and ended on December 31st.
Dont ask me why, some even attacks me for it. But it is their game. AAPL has been a ridiculously low P/E for a very long time.
P.S- Numbers are meaningless without explanation. I think Six Colour has the transcript which explains in a lot more details.
https://sixcolors.com/post/2018/02/this-is-tim-transcript-of-apples-q1-2018-earnings-call/
tl;dr. Bloody Great.