Apple Reports $19 Million Profit for Q3

pinqkandi writes "Apple released it's quarter three results today, which revealed a $19 million net profit ($0.05/diluted shared). Revenue reached $1.545 billion as 771,000 Macs were shipped. CEO Steve Jobs called it 'a great new product quarter', citing the new generation of iPods, iTunes Music Store, and the PowerMac G5."

Comments

Re:If only that translated

[Anonymous Coward]

Glad to see moderators following up on articles - Apple has not released any G5 Powerbooks yet.

READ BEFORE YOU MODERATE!

Profit for 1 reason

[BigBir3d]

$4billion cash reserve that makes nice interest as it sits in the bank.

Re:Profit for 1 reason

[BigBir3d]

4% of $4,000,000,000 is $160,000,000. That is over $40,000,000 per quarter. Profits were less than 1/2 of that. When profits are higher than the interest earned from the cash pool, then we have something interesting.

Re:Profit for 1 reason

[GlassHeart]

Your point is valid, but Apple is one of only a few companies doing anything interesting in this field right now. Within the past year or so, they have release several new software products (Safari, Keynote, Final Cut Express, and most recently Soundtrack), a new line of desktops featuring a new CPU, and at the same time updating just about every existing software title except maybe Appleworks, and every hardware product that I can remember. On top of that, they built an on-line music store.

Each of these take significant investments. The G5 line has not made a single dollar of profit yet, but must have consumed a lot of NRE dollars. This is precisely the stage where companies lose money developing new products, so Apple is just lucky that they have huge reserves to still turn a small profit.

All in all, your observation is rather cynical. It's almost as if you're suggesting that Apple would be a better company if they just laid everybody off, and turn a nearly guaranteed profit each quarter from bank interest.

Re:Low revenue?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah... their money spent (R&D, adverts, salaries, etc) is about the same as Dell. Only thing is, the sales are _much_ less than Dell's sales are.

Re:It has been a good year.

[dlosey]

I must agree. While I have always been a strong PC advocate, Apple is looking more and more inviting- especially that Dual G5. Apple has been advertising strongly to push their innovative new products. When is the last time you saw an Intel or M$ commercial (what did happen to those funny Intel guys in cleanroom suits?) The PC world is getting faster, and linux is making huge headway, but not many people seem all that excited about it. Digital video, I-pods, mp3s online, and large LCD screens seem to be the buzz lately. Apple seems to be leading the way on mainstream technology. Dell really is the only PC supplier that I can say has as much PR/Commercials as Apple. Unfortunately Dell seems to be pushing more into server markets than taking market share from Apple.

I know someone will reply with a ton of new PC innovations, but hey .. this is slashdot - just my $0.02.

Re:Dirty MP3 pirates paying for music????

[Alan Partridge]

Here's a little revision for us capitalists:-

1) Listen to customers.
2) Sell them what they want.
3) Profit.

See the difference?

Re:It has been a good year.

[Dr Reducto]

Yeah, that is a good point. Apple comes out with something uber-cool, and the PC world just sits back and says: "We just increased our processor speed by .5 gHz" or "The New version of Windows will be out in 6 months". Apple works on getting things done that haven't been done before, or done at all, consequences be damned.

Re:G5 Laptops Highly Unlikely

[Go Aptran]

This could become a big problem as Apple applications become more and more power-hungry. If G5s run hotter than G4s, it's going to make the thin streamlined metal cases highly impractical. I can already almost cook breakfast on my G4 TiBook now! I don't want to have to wear gloves to use a G5!

Furthermore, if we have a situations where the most useful software runs better only on desktops, it's going to irritate the many Mac users who find desktops impractical. For example, electronic musicians are unlikely to lug around a large G5 from gig to gig. It's been noted that Apple's new musical offering, Soundtrack, will only work on G4s. What happens when Soundtrack 2 or 3 comes out?

And don't forget...

[rjung2k]

...the economy. A lot of people are tightening their belts, and are not in the mood to buy anything from anyone. For any tech company to be making any sort of profit in this climate is a minor miracle in and of itself.

Re:Haha

[tres]

Doesn't seem too sad when you look at the state of the economy, when you take into account that many purchases of Apple Macintosh computers were put off until next quarter because of the upcoming next generation hardware.

It doesn't seem sad at all.

OS X and Apple Stores are working...

[metamatic]

From Investor's Business Daily:

Apple's share of U.S. consumer PC unit sales rose to 3.4% in the first quarter, up from 1.9% two years earlier. Its share of dollars spent on consumer PCs rose from 2.3% to 5.2%.

Things are brighter in the U.S. consumer notebook PC segment. Apple's unit market share rose from 0.3% to 6.8% in the two years. And its share of the market based on dollars spent rose from 0.2% to 8%.

This says to me that xServe isn't managing to push the Mac into the business server market, but OS X and nifty hardware have lead to a major jump in consumer sales.

Re:G5 Laptops Highly Unlikely

[Myrcurial]

Don't worry so much about the weight of a "large G5" -- these guys like to carry their Marshall stack heads with real tube amps from gig to gig -- 30-40lbs of G5 is nothing.

Re:I love apple, but...

[overunderunderdone]

Why? Because profit is money wasted. Better to invest your capital than give it away to shareholders.

A little confusion over who's money it is? The investors quite literaly own the company and it is their money, their company and it is (supposed to be & is legally obligated to be) run for their benefit. Actually, stictly speaking they ARE the company - a collective body of individuals (the shareholders) that in a limited way can legally act as though they were a single individual (to do things like hire you to make them more money). They are usually more than happy letting you reinvest their profits if it will lead to a bigger, healthier, MORE PROFITABLE company in the future but that is a very different thing froms saying profit is "money wasted" and that it is better to inveset than "give it away to shareholders".

Re:It has been a good year.

[Graff]

linux is making huge headway, but not many people seem all that excited about it

It's all a matter of who Linux is suited for and targeted at. Linux is a great operating system that kicks ass as a server platform and is great for many tasks but it is not really an operating system for the masses, no matter how great the strides have been in attempting to make it so. It is because of this that there aren't droves of non-technically inclined people rushing to it. This doesn't make Linux any less great, it just means that you won't see it pushing other operating systems off the desktop just yet.

As for MacOS, it is designed especially for the non-techs with the addition of a stable BSD and Mach core for the techs. It tries to give the best of both worlds to its users without sacrificing much of either and it succeeds fairly admirably. In addition Apple seems to be smart enough not to try to compete with any of the other minor platforms but instead tries to work with and even enhance them by giving back code and working on free (speech, beer...whatever) projects.

Re:Haha

[tyrione]

Rougly 771,000 x 4 periods would be roughly 3 million units per year.

In 4 years that would be rougly 12 million units.

Apple hardware tends to last 4 years so nice guaranteed business.

Assuming interest peaks as the job market goes from the Abyss back to normalcy and people start spending money you'll see more of a surge in purchases as more and more compelling pieces of software keep surfacing with each innovation.

Being Porsche has never been being Ford, but everyone would love to own a Porsche and outside of the battle of Chevy vs. Ford on trucks who the hell wants to settle for a Ford if they can enjoy a Porsche?

Porsche seems to survive and has been around quite a long time.

Music is Apple's Future

[jamesmrankinjr]

Apple's growth prospects are all wrapped up in Music.

• iPod sales way up, especially with Windows version.
• 6.5MM songs sold WITHOUT a Windows version. Huge growth potential here, and scales nicely (marginal cost of selling a song is roughly 0, compared to computers which have large fixed costs).
• iTunes Music Store for Windows should create even more iPod sales, completing the virtuous circle.

So outlook for growth in Apple profits is tied strongly to its music business, much more so than computer sales.

Best,
-jimbo

Re:It has been a good year.

[MacGod]

That's not totally true. Apple previously (including the "beleagured" days) sold a much wider variety of hardware.

Remember, Apple used to sell its own Monitors, printers, scanners, digital cameras, PDAs, external hard drives, external CD drives and more.

What they're really done is move out of the over-populated peripherals markets (such as scanners and printers, which they didn't manufacture anyway, the printers were just rebranded Canons or HPs) and focus on key innovative hardware (the iPod), and software (iLife, the Studio Pros et all).

A good move, methinks.