Apple Reports Q1 Loss

Amsterdam Vallon writes "Apple recently reported an $8 million loss, its second straight loss, compared with a $38 million profit a year ago. It seems that upbeat laptop sales weren't enough to get this company out of the Wall Street basement. Hopefully, with increasing Mac OS X and wireless-related sales, we'll see a nice increase come next quarter and after that, perhaps a jaunt toward profitability!" The back was apparently tipped into the red with one-time restructuring losses, else there would have been a modest profit; Apple expects stagnant revenues for the near future.

Comments

Marketshare is down

[Anonymous Coward]

Their worldwide marketshare is now 1.93%. According to IDC, 38.4 million PCs were shipped last quarter, up 4% from the year ago period. Apple shipped 743,000 Macs which is down 2% from the year ago period. This follows a steady trend in declining marketshare over the past 5 years.

Re:Marketshare is down

[thatguywhoiam]

Their worldwide marketshare is now 1.93%

This statistic, like most computer-use statistics, is erroneous and misleading.

IDG does not factor in sales from direct retail (i.e. Apple Store), or the online AppleStore incarnation. A better way to read that is: Apple has 1.93% of the PC market.

If you really want to see what percentage of the computer-using public is on Mac, check Google's stats. (can't find it now, but I know its there somewhere.)

There is a downward trend in marketshare, but this is indicative of the entire PC industry in general.

Sorry for the pickiness - I just hate seeing that bad IDG stat quoted over and over again.

Re:Marketshare is down

[neverkevin]

Do you mean Google Zeitgeist? I don't know If I could consider that the authority on Apple market share, but it's better then IDG. If you are going to believe Google then Apple market share has stayed steady at 4%.

More details....

[bifurcation]

fyi, here's the Original Press release from apple and the Quicktime broadcast of the conference call in which the statements are announced.

one should note also that the only reason apple posted a loss was that it had to pay a one-time restructuring fee. without that, it would have actually posted an $11M profit, which would be a drop (from $38M last Q1), but a far less dramatic one than the loss they indicated.

Re:More details....

[nelsonal]

There are two main expenses in restructuring, a corporate euphamism for layoffs, severance and lease termination fees. Usually the bulk is severance, but it does depend on the lease structure. Occasionally there are non cash restructuring expenses usually writing down of assests. $20 million is pretty small, I think Nortel had a cash restructuring charge in the billions. They also had writedowns in the $10s of billions, but that isn't a cash expense. A write-down is just the company recognising that something they bought wasn't worth what they paid for it.

Re:Damn,

[nob]

Very funny... except this was comment was posted, word for word, on MacSlash 2 days ago.

But if you're just a karma whore, why are you posting anonymously?

Jobs kept his word.

[skia]

This shouldn't be a big surprise, as this is exactly what Apple said they were going to do at MWNY last year. Jobs said that the market was crappy and that Apple's sector and therefore Apple itself would be hit hard. But he said that Apple had a lot in the bank and -- unlike other computer manufacturers -- was prepared to invest and innovate through the downturn, taking a loss at first, then floating by on their technology, and then, when things started picking back up again, hitting the ground running to overtake their competitors.

Looks like, with the introduction of the new sexxy powerbooks, some great brand-new lines of software, and that big hit listed as "one time re-organization costs", Apple is right on schedule.

Re:Question

[Anonymous Coward]

Slashdot readers like choice, and the best deal, and you don't always get that with Apple at all levels.

Apple isn't less choice, it is part of the choice. It is one of the few consumer alternatives to x86 out there! And as far as the best deal... well that obviously depends on how far ahead you're looking. If highest number of gigahertz processor + lowest price = best deal, then a PC would win. If overall quality and ease of use + style + less maintenance + better quality hardware + etc = best deal, then the Mac would win.

2. As recent events [slashdot.org] have shown us Apple makes proprietary software and hardware and it sometimes bites you in the a$$. If thye don't like what you are doing they have much more power to stop you when you are running Apple software.

Oh... now I see, you're just an asshole. This is total FUD bullshit. The iCommune situation you are referring to shouldn't have been the slightest bit of a surprise to anyone involved. Apple created iTunes and provided the iTunes SDK, which had certain license terms. One of those terms explicitly stated that the SDK was not to be used to develop software to share music over the Internet. This was directly defied by the makers of iCommune, and when they made their software available to the public, Apple sent them a not-mean-at-all email telling them they were in violation of the agreement and had to stop making this software available.

I mean, Jesus Christ almighty, why do you think Apple had the ability to do that?? Because the iCommune people were using Apple's stuff to develop the software! If iCommune was built by the developers from the ground up, Apple wouldn't have been able to do anything.

Conclusion: you are very uninformed.

Before you start the 'End of the Apple' threads ..

[Anonymous Coward]

...

Have you seen Sun's latest quarterly report ?

--
Sun Microsystems Inc., saddled with huge acquisition costs, posted a $2.3 billion quarterly loss on Thursday -- its largest ever.

That translated to a loss of 72 cents per share in the fiscal quarter ended Dec. 29, compared with a $431 million loss (13 cents per share) in the year- ago period.

Excluding the one-time charges covering the acquisition and other costs, however, the Santa Clara firm actually turned a modest profit. It earned $10 million (0 cents per share) in the past quarter on revenue of $2.9 million, compared with a loss of $99 million (3 cents) on sales of $3.1 billion in the year-ago period.

--

Re:declining profits

[LordNimon]

Apple stores are a success, not a failure:

Mr. Anderson noted that the retail stores generated $23 million in manufacturing profit. "[They're] already beginning to pay off," Anderson said, responding to naysayers.

Source: http://www.macnn.com/feature.php?id=373