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Apple Plans to Grow to $10 Billion

Posted by pudge on from the i-plan-that-for-myself-too dept.

mattmcal writes "Fred Anderson, CFO of Apple, this week outlined Apple's strategy for returning to its former self as a $10 billion company. He cited portability, digital lifestyle, and music as the three pimary drivers of this new strategy. Anderson announced last month that he plans to retire June 1 of this year."

9 of 244 comments (clear)

  1. Shouldn't that be CFO? by o'bryon · · Score: 5, Informative

    Fred Anderson is the CFO, NOT CTO...

  2. Current Market Cap: 8.87B by Pr0Hak · · Score: 5, Informative

    According to quote.yahoo.com, the current market cap for AAPL is 8.87B, so they're approaching the 9B mark already. I think Apple is well on track with the high profit margins and popularity of the iPod, and all the great things they have been doing with both Mac hardware and MacOS X the last couple of years.

    The excitement that has been surrounding Apple the last couple of years reminds me of the Macintosh during the System 7 or PowerPC transitions.

    Also, it should be noted that Fred Anderson is the C*F*O of Apple, not the CTO

    1. Re:Current Market Cap: 8.87B by krem81 · · Score: 5, Informative

      When people talk in terms like that ($10B company, etc.) they're usually talking about annual revenue, not market cap. Stock price fluctuates a lot - depending on market's mood Apple could have $10B market cap tomorrow. Revenue, however, takes a while to catch up. Apple's revenue for 2003 was $6.7 B, so the company has to grow 50% to get $10B mark.

  3. Re:Current earnings? by primordial+ooze · · Score: 5, Informative

    Any idea of what Apple's current earnings are right now?

    http://www.apple.com/pr/library/2004/jan/14resul ts .html

    Apple Reports First Quarter Results

    Revenue Increases 36 Percent Year-Over-Year

    CUPERTINO, California--January 14, 2004--Apple(R) today announced financial results for its fiscal 2004 first quarter ended December 27, 2003. For the quarter, the Company posted a net profit of $63 million, or $.17 per diluted share. These results compare to a net loss of $8 million, or $.02 per diluted share, in the year-ago quarter. Revenue for the quarter reached a four-year high of $2.006 billion, up 36 percent from the year-ago quarter. Gross margin was 26.7 percent, down from 27.6 percent in the year-ago quarter. International sales accounted for 44 percent of the quarter's revenue.

    ...

  4. Re:Current earnings? by nelsonal · · Score: 5, Informative

    Earnings are pretty small, there aren't too many companies that earn more than 10 billion/year. He was likely refering to revenues, (hit about $6.2 last fiscal year, $6.7 last calendar year).

    --
    Degaussing scares the bad magnetism out of the monitor and fills it with good karma.
  5. Mac users and stockholders owe Fred a LOT by csoto · · Score: 5, Informative

    This guy has consistently beat the crap out of Apple management over waste. Order fulfillment has never sunk to (pre-Jobs) bad levels. Their products are competitively priced, and they sure are cool. Innovation abounds. None of this would be possible if Apple were still hemorrhaging money.

    Good job, Fred! Good luck with retirement.

    --
    There exists no way of exchanging information without making judgments. --Bene Gesserit Axiom
  6. Re:What a KLUDGE! by squiggleslash · · Score: 5, Informative
    To turn it on, you press any button. You certainly don't need to read a manual for that. Nor do you have to turn it off, the thing will go into sleep mode anyway if it's not playing music and not used for more than a small period of time.

    In practice, users never need to treat it as "on" or "off", which - if it wasn't for the poor design of most units that are "always on" in some way - really ought to be the way most electronic devices work. It's more intuitive to have the thing just doing what you ask it than to have to examine what mode it's on and react accordingly.

    --
    You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
  7. Re:hopefully by increasing volume not margins by fluf · · Score: 5, Informative
    I'm not going to debate you on the merits of a cheap headless machine from Apple, because I'd love one myself. Furthermore, I'm also not going to attack your criticism with regards to the 'crippling' of the low-end hardware by Apple, because you are in fact correct, and I share your disdain for Apple's actions on that front. I'm just going to correct you on factual misinformation in the following quote:
    Especially since they criple the lower end hardware, making it less attrictive to switcher. Example: The ibook you buy can't drive an external monitor at more the 1024x768 when my pc 200 mhz laptop easily can? This has turned off many people I know.

    Technically, all the current iBooks can drive an external display at a resolution above 1024 x 768. Apple just turns it off in software (the open firmware). For information on how to easily (without risk of losing warranty) turning this back on, look here:

    Rute Moeller's spanning hack for the iBook

    And yes, I fully agree that we shouldn't have to resort to this kind of solution, but it is a solution nonetheless, and one that has worked very well for me for the past two years on my 600 Mhz iBook. In fact, I wouldn't have bought my iBook had I not known about this.

    Cheers.
  8. Random market caps by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    > According to quote.yahoo.com, the current market cap for AAPL is 8.87B, so they're approaching the 9B mark already.

    Some random market caps for your amusement, all in 10^9 US$
    - General Electric 329
    - Microsoft: 284
    - Exxon-Mobile: 277
    - Wal-Mart: 261
    - Intel: 189
    - IBM: 166
    - Cisco: 156
    - Coca-Cola: 120
    - Dell: 84
    - HP: 70
    - Time-Warner: 77
    - Disney: 55
    - Ebay: 44
    - Yahoo: 29
    - GM: 27
    - Ford: 26
    - Amazon: 17
    - Sun: 17
    - Apple: 8.9
    - RedHat: 3.2
    - McDonalds: 2.2
    - Gateway: 1.9
    - SCO: 0.17