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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."

35 of 106 comments (clear)

  1. It has been a good year. by Dr+Reducto · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Apple has turned their business around and generated a lot of mainstream press this year. They finally made their Powermacs top of the line, they made the 17in laptop, the new iPods, and it now looks really good for Apple. They should hive themselves a pat on the back.

    And on an unrelated note, this may be a First Post.

    1. Re:It has been a good year. by dlosey · · Score: 2, Insightful

      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.

    2. Re:It has been a good year. by Dr+Reducto · · Score: 4, Insightful

      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.

    3. Re:It has been a good year. by chia_monkey · · Score: 3, Interesting

      It's been a very good year indeed. The interesting thing to note is how different Apple's products and services are now as to how they were a few years ago when the only thing you could read about Apple was how beleaguered they were and close to death.

      For example...Apple then:
      They sold computers. Sure they sold the OS and a few other things (monitors, other software, etc), but that was it.

      Apple now:
      Computers. And laptops which are definitely helping them gain some market share again. And MORE software such as Safari (even though it's free...who would have guessed they'd do something like that?), Keynote (you brave bastards), FinalCut Pro (do I really need to talk about their high-end software?), everything in their iLife bundle.
      Better yet...the iPod. Shnikeys! They're making some good money off that. It's new hardware that's not a computer. And good money.
      iTunes Music Service...for something that only serves 3% (who knows what the real number is...it changes daily) of the market, they're doing DAMN good with that. Imagine when it comes out for the PC.

      It's funny to compare the Apple of today to the one of yesterday. Worlds apart.

      --

      "He uses statistics as a drunken man uses lampposts...for support rather than illumination." - Andrew Lang
    4. Re:It has been a good year. by Graff · · Score: 3, Insightful
      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.
    5. Re:It has been a good year. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Informative

      Just a correction: you are incorrect in your assessment. Apple's Net Income may be lower, (32 to 19 mil), but revenues were up (1.55 bil) as were earnings per share ($.05/share, beating street estimates of $.03). Apple and Dell are the only computer manufacturers to actually be profitiable in this economy, so it is actually very impressive. For proof, look at their share price (+$.71 at time of post).

    6. Re:It has been a good year. by MacGod · · Score: 2, Insightful
      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.

      --
      "Reality is merely an illusion, albeit a very persistent one " -Albert Einstein
  2. Re:If only that translated by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

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

    READ BEFORE YOU MODERATE!

  3. G5 Laptops Highly Unlikely by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Informative

    I guess that last Anonymous Coward was trying to be funny by making everyone double check Apple.com for new laptops.

    However, it is unlikely we'll see G5 laptops anytime soon. The current IBM 970 chips run way, way too hot. Until a low-power version of the G5 is designed, expect G3's and G4's to continue to be the chips in laptops for some time.

    1. Re:G5 Laptops Highly Unlikely by Go+Aptran · · Score: 2, Insightful
      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?

      --

      "Under the spreading chestnut tree, I sold you and you sold me."

    2. Re:G5 Laptops Highly Unlikely by Myrcurial · · Score: 2, Insightful

      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.

    3. Re:G5 Laptops Highly Unlikely by awl · · Score: 2, Informative

      I don't like to carry my Marshall head from gig to gig, but I do like to have it at the gig, so there isn't really much alternative... ;-)

      More to the point, if you're toting a Marshall head then you are probably also carrying at least 1 4x12 speaker cabinet, which makes even the head feel portable.

  4. Profit for 1 reason by BigBir3d · · Score: 4, Insightful

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

    1. Re:Profit for 1 reason by GlassHeart · · Score: 4, Insightful
      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.

    2. Re:Profit for 1 reason by nelsonal · · Score: 2, Informative

      Prime is what banks charge their best customers if they have perfect credit. Interest on cash (required by accounting rules to be in things that mature in less than 1 year) is around 1.0%-1.5%. The idea here is to spur companies in to investing thier cash in something that generates economic returns (new business assets) becuase their cash give them so little or conversely because they can borrow at a very low rate. The scary part is when it doesn't work (see Japan) because everyone is too scared of losing their investment so they keep their money in cash and don't borrow anything new. I'd guess that between that and natural gas prices Mr. Greenspan is waking in a cold sweat regularly.

      --
      Degaussing scares the bad magnetism out of the monitor and fills it with good karma.
    3. Re:Profit for 1 reason by Gogo+Dodo · · Score: 2, Informative

      If you read their Financial Statement, you will see they made $17 million in interest, so interest is not the sole reason for their profit.

  5. Low revenue? by SoCalChris · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Isn't $19 million in profit awfully low for $1.545 BILLION in revenueThat gives them a profit margin of about 1.25%.

    1. Re:Low revenue? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

      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.

    2. Re:Low revenue? by pmz · · Score: 4, Funny

      Isn't $19 million in profit awfully low for $1.545 BILLION in revenueThat gives them a profit margin of about 1.25%.

      I'd say we should be ecstatic that the number was positive, regardless of magnitude. This means, at a minimum, Apple is stable in the near-term and won't disappear in a vapor in a bankrupcy court anytime soon. As long as they stay afloat, they can keep sticking irritating glass fibers into Microsoft's pale skin.

  6. Re:my mac is simply too slow by daviddennis · · Score: 3, Informative

    Either you're a troll, or something's wrong with your system.

    I've passed gigabytes from my PowerBook G4/1ghz to my LaCie 200gb FireWire drive in less time than that, and generally I've found performance of internal drives is much better than external.

    I would bring your system to an Apple Store and ask the Genius Bar people to take a look at it.

    That being said, in my experience, the speed of a Mac isn't much different from PC speed one way or the other, and the aesthetics are a great deal more attractive. I find it more enjoyable to use a Mac, and that pretty much closes off debate for me.

    Hope that helps.

    D

  7. Re:Dirty MP3 pirates paying for music???? by Alan+Partridge · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Here's a little revision for us capitalists:-

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

    See the difference?

    --
    That was classic intercourse!
  8. Mac Units? by TechnoPope · · Score: 3, Interesting

    What exactly is a Mac unit? Is it just a computer, or does it also include the always popular Ipod? I'm not saying I doubt that they sold 771,000 PC's in a quarter, but it seems a little weird. Especially since apperently profits were actually down. I'd assume they make less profits on the Ipod then other things. Just wondering.

    --
    Slashdot...it's like Fox news, but without the biased sl...or maybe not.
    1. Re:Mac Units? by tenton · · Score: 5, Informative

      You can see the breakdown.

      The iPods are considered "Peripherals & Other HW"

      The 771,000 doesn't include iPods...it's only PowerMacs, Powerbooks, iBooks, and iMacs (the eMacs are part of the iMac numbers, the server units, ie XServer is part of the PowerMac units).

      The breakdown is like this (in the thousands, of course):
      iMac: 256
      iBook:133
      Power Mac G4: 156
      PowerBook: 166

  9. Them iPod Snobs by inertia187 · · Score: 2, Funny

    About them iPod Snobs,
    don't it make you sick?
    Goin' all around,
    enjoyin' they music.
    They listen on the bus,
    they listen on the plain.
    Showin' off for all to see,
    ain't it just a pain?
    Look at all those iPod Snobs,
    owning one is wrong.
    They can load enough to play
    three weeks worth of songs!
    How to be a iPod Snob,
    it's not very hard.
    Go to Apple's Store,
    and charge it on your card.

    --
    A programmer is a machine for converting coffee into code.
  10. And don't forget... by rjung2k · · Score: 3, Insightful

    ...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.

  11. That was *last* quarter by overunderunderdone · · Score: 3, Informative

    This did in fact happen last quarter (the profits being all in interest on the $$ in the bank while the business otherwise would have shown a loss). THIS quarter however they did in fact run a profit off of their business of selling computers. Also to be fair they are doing some things this quarter that cost a fair amount of $$$ that are investments that will reap rewards in future quarters. Opening new stores and opening the iTunes music store - which is actually supposed to turn the corner as soon as this next quarter, and may be a real cash cow when it comes out for windows.

  12. Re:Haha by tres · · Score: 3, Insightful

    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.

    --
    Notes From Under *nix: blas.phemo.us
  13. OS X and Apple Stores are working... by metamatic · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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.

    --
    GCHQ Quantum Insert installed. If only our tongues were made of glass, how much more careful we would be when we speak
  14. Re:I love apple, but... by overunderunderdone · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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".

  15. Re:my mac is simply too slow by TheRaven64 · · Score: 2, Informative
    2. All current powermacs use 7200 rpm Ultra ATA hard drives, meaning about 100 MB/s. So your 20 megs shouldn't take 20 minutes, it should take 1/20 of a second. Strike 2.

    Really? Can you provide some real world benchmarks to back that up? Most 7,200rpm IDE drives provide around 7MB/s write 20MB/s read speeds (sometimes more for linear read / writes or cache hits), nowhere near the maximum theoretical speed of the interface. Actually, you an be glad of that, since a 32bit 33MHz PCI bus only has a little more bandwidth than that, and if a single drive could saturate it then the system can crawl. I'd expect to see a 20MB file copy taking about 2-5 seconds, not 1/20 seconds.

    Mind you, the grandparent post is still a blatant and unoriginal troll...

    --
    I am TheRaven on Soylent News
  16. Re:A long road still ahead by Juanvaldes · · Score: 3, Informative

    According to this in 1993 apples share was 10%. While this chart gives no idea on actually installed base we do know the PC market is MANY times larger today then it was 10 years ago resulting with a small % that apple can serve.
    But you are very right in apple still has a LONG road ahead, hopefuly apple from one side, Linux from the other and the PC market can be broken into three dominant platforms.
    Hey, I can dream can't I? ;)

  17. Re:Haha by tyrione · · Score: 3, Insightful

    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.

  18. Music is Apple's Future by jamesmrankinjr · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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

  19. Re:I love apple, but... by overunderunderdone · · Score: 2, Informative

    Either my reading comprehension of your post, or yours of mine sucks. Or perhaps you're a troll and you have me hooked ;)

    You said that profits are a waste and that the $$$ should be reinvested to grow the company. For what reason the company should grow is unclear, it appears to you to be an end unto itself. I said to the contrary that profits are the entire point and that if you do choose to reinvest it would be towards then end of having even more profits to pocket.

    I am convinced that some of the problems in corporate America today is confusion over this fundamental issue. The confusion is understandable because with todays tax laws profits, real tangible honest profits, are taxed twice and at a high rate both times. Capital gains on the other hand are taxed only once and that one time at a lower rate. So, investors naturally want to make their stock price go up rather than have it pay dividends. Beyond encouraging your kind of thinking the problem is that unlike dividends stock prices don't have to be grounded in any kind of objective reality. The internet bubble and Enron amply illustrated that. The whole stock price game can become a massive, complex, unstable ponzi scheme ungrounded in reality. Enron is a perfect example of the result - it was only important to grow on paper, losses were hidden and profits were manufactured and nobody was the wiser (for a while) because nobody actually wanted to get those "profits" Enron claimed to have. Everybody was happy and tax law encouraged them to "reinvest" to make the company bigger and the stock price go up. If the tax laws had been otherwise Enron would have had to be more honest, if they claimed chimerical profits investors would have wanted at least some of them to go in their pocket. Sadly, while the Bush administration made some progress they got demogogued about "cutting taxes for the rich" and didn't push this through. While it really would be a tax cut for the rich it is still the right thing to do, and with all the 401(k)'s, IRA's, mutual funds and stock investments by pension funds your average stock holder isn't exactly the top hat wearing caricature of wealth from the monopoly box.

  20. Ah! so you /do/ read your followup posts Mr Troll! by jo_ham · · Score: 2, Informative

    I see that you corrrected your troll template after posting "Even SimpleText is straining to keep up as I type this." in your post in the previous Mac thread yesterday and people pointed out that you obviously didn't know what you were talking about or that you'd ever used a Mac since SimpleText is an OS 9 app, not an OS X one.

    Well corrected; you even capitalised it correctly, although I suspect you just cut and pasted from one of the replies to your troll.

    You really are a bizarre person, I imagine that you ride a bus that's far shorter than it is wide.