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Apple’s first quarter earnings are in. According to Bloomberg News, Apple made £8.3 billion in profit on £34.1 billion in revenue. It sold an absurd 47.8 million iPhones and 22.9 million iPads — both new records. Somehow, this is a disappointment.
Apple has been fighting off rumours of lagging interest in its products — iPhone and iPad specifically — for weeks now. The £34.1 billion missed its £34.6 estimate, and the company’s stock continued to fall after hitting a record back in September.
For reference, last year over the same period, Apple made a profit of £8.2 billion on £29.2 billion in revenue. It sold 37 million iPhones and 15 million iPads, both records at the time, and both obliterated by today’s results. So profit is down, slightly, but this isn’t a case of Apple taking a dive so much as levelling off. [Bloomberg]
It’s a disappointment to me, just means it will be longer now till they go bust
Excellent retort
No, that was just snark, this is an excellent retort http://goo.gl/wDvTt
Badum-tish!
I thank you.
How? How is that a disappointment?
The company I work for, Capgemini, make €9 billion in revenue and only €40 million in profit A YEAR, not quarter, and they are very, very happy with it.
What the hell is wrong with you Apple?
I love any excuse to bash Apple, but this time it’s not Apple who is at fault, it’s Wall Street expectations.
Where is he?!
I’d still love to see you under those treads!
Dammit, a minute too late.
Asleep maybe? I’m not sure. It’s still early in the day so he will appear eventually.
I’m an early bird, purposely avoided having an opinion on this thread to try and shake off my freakishly creepy little stalker.
I’d still love to see you under those treads!
The numbers don’t really matter, it’s actual results against predicted since previous share price will have been trading against predicted. You beat the prediction shares rise, you miss and they fall. It’ll level out after the initial dip. (Well level out to whatever the price would have done anyway that is not necessarily stay the same)
I would think any company making a profit at the moment would be happy in this economy.
Because speculators and investors are only interested in patterns and the pattern is turning to a downward slope in profits for Apple. ie they don’t meet investor expectations which are based on previous growth. Even if Apple profits / share price doesn’t start to decline but flattens out, nobody wants to invest in shares that wont increase in value because they wont make any money back, but still run the risk of them declining and losing money. Thats the problem with the stock market system Im afraid its expand or die because thats the only way investors can make money reselling the shares.
“Somehow, this is a disappointment”
Only to the mentally handicapped who thought AAPL would be at $1,000 now.
Unfortunately the fates of the financial systems are controlled by these retards. As has been shown, this does not always go well.
I remember reading something to that effect on a website when Apples shares first started to dip, something about I’ll eat my hat if they don’t hit $1000 come January or something to that effect. I think when people say stupid things like that, they’re just trying to boast the share price by persuading idiots to buy Shares so they can offload. The stock markets like a pyramid scheme theres always someone left holding the empty can, it usually ends with pensioners being ripped off.
It’s crazy that these numbers can be considered a disappointment, really what does Wall Street expect Apple to do? It can’t keep the massive growth for ever and should of adjusted there exceptions accordingly.
It’s a crazy world when these types of profits are considered a disappointment.
Perhaps it’s intentional, to devalue the stock?
They didn’t hit target. That’s a disappointment because investors were basing things off that target.
The numbers are irrelevant unless you are apple the shares trade based on future price and dividend value, or more accurately on confidence of worth, missing the prediction knocks confidence at least in the short term.
Well actually they should be….
They dont go off of we sold x smart phones last year and 10 million more this year, that is good….
They will look at it like this
If the smartphone market worldwide grew by 300 million last year, we would want to claim at least 30% of that growth (just a figure for example) so they would need to ship at least 90m phones extra from last year….
Its not as simple as we sold more than last year, its about improving on your market share percentage wordwide.
I read this as a surefire sign of Apple taking a downward turn. Revenues are up, but margins have been squeezed.
Personally I feel that this is because people are failing to see a benefit in ‘upgrading’ to the latest version of iPhone. And Apple are behind the competition in terms of R&D and acquisition.
Android has the market-share across the various budget ranges and will continue to make a dent in the ‘high-end’ (as it has with the GS3, HTC One X etc.) Apple now also have Windows Phone to worry about, which although not currently a serious player, will only grow market share as the offering matures (it already offers something tangibly different and more engaging visually than the aging iOS UI and has a certain ‘cool’ factor)
iPod sales are dropping like a stone. iTunes has only just recently turned a profit and Windows tablets are starting to take off and are loved by Enterprise business (while Android certainly has budget tablets sewn-up). iPad sales are bound to hit a plateau. Unless Apple drastically shake-up their offering sometime soon and innovate further, I can only see these figures going one way long-term. I’m not predicting them falling off a cliff, but Apple will eventually pay the price for basing their business on a narrow product offering and high margins.
They have the resources to turn things around, but until we see product…I can’t see them continuing the upward trend.
I don’t think it’s about the hardware as such, iOS needs a fresh face. I predict RIM and Windows Phone will make big inroads this year (5 handsets for RIM and Nokia with it’s PureView range), with Apple coming up from behind as the year progresses.
I think it is regarding the hardware, as I and others predicted this happening over a year ago – if change doesn’t come, and it didn’t.
Yes, and when change does come, things will…change for the better.
If, not when.
500 mill short? For Apple whom deal in tens of billions that hardly seems worth crying over.
“We obviously could have sold more than this because we couldn’t build enough iPad minis to come into demand balance” – Tim Cook
So either he’s admitting that Apple’s two greatest assets (marketing and supply chain management) aren’t working properly or just fibbing to cover the iPad mini’s poor sales…
Not good either way…
“We obviously could have sold more than this because we couldn’t build enough iPad minis to come into demand balance”
How could that be a lie for “The iPad Mini isn’t selling as well as we hoped?”
That’s clearly another way of saying “we underestimated the demand for the iPad Mini.”
Otherwise he would have said something like “We released the iPad mini at the wrong time” or “the market wasn’t as mature as we had hoped for the iPad Mini,” not “we didn’t make enough of them.”
There is almost certainly a fall in interest in its products. I don’t think Apple’s got anything more to offer, except usual design+spec upgrades.
This isn’t just about not reaching expectations, this could be a lot worse than people are making out.
I’ve heard reports of many returned iPhone 5 stock over the Christmas period – and these returns may or may not have been classed as solid sale and profit in the Q4, be interesting to see if we get revised figures in the next quarter.
Then the supply chain is screwed and Apple are now paying more for worse parts, as they cut off that nose to spite Samsung, who are now the biggest purchaser of semiconductors – that was once Apple’s title.
Their share drop is mainly based on projections and Apple’s own part orders. As everyone upgrading an iPhone 5 has one in Q4 2012. That is that 50m iPhone upgraders we liked to talk about – who is buying after that? If you are one of those 50m with a Apple eco-system then you are kinda stuck with that, if not then you have better options – you’d have to be a class idiot to openly buy into an iPhone today, any advantage has gone and only the disadvantages remain.
You have Apple’s market squarely based on two products now, phone and tablet – yet they reduced their own profit on iPads by bringing out the mini. And the tablet market is likely to move beyond them this year like the phone market started to do two years back.
Then it appears that a new trend is slowly becoming the norm, people are’t buying smartphones but smartdevices. Larger phones and tablets with added phone functionality – it appears that a larger device for media with a slight disadvantage of a larger size for a phone is what the market wants – Internet, emails, social and media is far more important to us than a simply call. And that size issue will soon be addressed with a good smartwatch for calls and updates. And this is something Apple need to respond to with a solid offerings, they need a iPad mini combined with iPhone at the right price – will they do that? I don’t see it, mentally they seem years away from being on that page.
A big problem is Apple’s denial in all this, I read that Cook was pressed about the iPhone 5 screen, “We put a lot of thought into screen sizes and we think we picked the right one.” Really? Should read, “We put some thought into screen sizes and ended up with an overly compromised offering”, I think that is a little more truthful as you wouldn’t make a smartphone that size and shape unless you were looking for a compromise.
I think on the plus side they have $137.1 billion in the bank and a little time, and only a little time before too much face has been lost to recover. But without a clue that will only carry you so far. A stubborn mentality can be a blessing and a curse.
($137.1 billion, I was tempted to drop the $0.1 billion as short hand, then I realised I was disappearing $100 million from Apple’s bank account, the things we could do with that 0.1)