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Apple Posts 4th Quarter Financial Results
theanonymousbrit writes "From the AppleInsider article: 'Apple today announced financial results for its fiscal 2004 fourth quarter ended September 25, 2004. For the quarter, the Company posted a net profit of $106 million, or $.26 per diluted share.' This profit (on a revenue of $2.35 billion) apparently constitutes Apple's highest fourth quarter in nine years. In terms of actual units shipped, over 830,000 Macs and 2 million iPods were sold over the quarter. The strength of the new iMac G5 is also credited. Pretty impressive figures."
that apple is dying now?
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... about Apple's continued success is that there is no apparent successor to Steve Jobs. Back in the beige days before Jobs returned ... I seriously thought Apple was going to disappear.
What Jobs has done to re-invigorate the company has been amazing, but what happens if something happens to Steve? Is there anyone else who can whip up the "reality distortion field" with the same frenzy to make Apple stay the trendy, innovative company that they are now.
I know the talent will be there, but without the leadership, will Apple again drift like back in the Gil A. days and fade into obscurity?
It just makes me nervous to think that the sole success of this company might hinge on the availability of Steve Jobs. (It's not like people live forever, you know)
That's great, but what are they going to do with all their spare cash? They are already building a much better operating system than Microsoft's offerings with their existing budget. It doesn't matter how kick-ass their operating system is any more - it's ahead of the competition, and the only thing stopping them from taking a larger market share is the fact that they don't have the critical mass of market share there already.
What I would like to see Apple do is be more agressive in getting people to switch. Advertising is nice, but people who just use computers rather than having them as a hobby aren't going to pay much attention. They have a computer already, and they are comfortable with what they know.
How about a trade-in? People bring their old PCs to their local Apple store, and they get a big discount off a new Apple. Or perhaps a free training course (with certificate) when buying an Apple computer. The training course alone will ease newbies in and show them how easy it is, and the certificate will attract the people looking to improve their resume.
Apple don't have a problem building a better system than Microsoft's. They do have a problem with the network effect. When you ask your neighbour for help to fix your computer, chances are, he's only going to know Windows. When you walk into a newsagents, 99% of the magazines are focussed on Windows. When you copy a game from a friend, it'll be a Windows game. This is Apple's bottleneck; it doesn't matter how kick-ass their product is, they are only going to have marginal increases in market share as long as they think outperforming the competition is enough.
Listening to the analyst conference call, which is a pretty interesting thing to do, regardless of the company, Apple disclosed, and did not disclose, some interesting items:
(1) They have reached supply/demand balance with the G5 processors with the potential exception of the top market 2.5 Ghz which may have slightly more demand over the next three months than IBM can supply for.
(2) They would not discuss the possibility of FLASH based iPods and/or lower cost units to penetrate the low end market
(3) Apple reitterated thier interest in the $800+ desktop market and not the sub $800 market
(4) About 30% of Apple store sales are to people who have previously owned Windows boxes and their sales to people who have never owned a PC are down from the pervious year, which Apple attributed to there being fewer and fewer people who have never owned a PC before.
(5) The new iMac G5 is off to an impressive start and they wish they could have had it for back to school buying season.
(6) Their current iPod promption is an exclusive pre-release with U2. Apple feels very good about their strategy that is holding 70% of the on-line legal download market with Wal-mart and Real at 6%, Napster with 10%.
(7) iPod is in lots of channels including BestBuy (ed note, I have also seen for sale at Foly's department store in Texas and the HP iPod is for sale at Radio Shack). This is iPod only but Apple continues to look for strong retail partners for CPUs as well.
(8) An analyst said 'hPod' and the Apple person corrected him to the tune of the HP branded iPod or something of that nature.
(9) Apple's board from time to time considers stock buy back programs but is not interested in one at this time. This is noteworthy because many top level Apple execs (Jobs being most notable) have very large stock option packages but low salary (Jobs' being $1). Since a share of stock is a percentage of ownership in the company, when the company issues more shares, this dilutes the value of a single share already outstanding. By buying back stock in the open market, a company would increase stock value, because exisitng stock would have the reverse effect, it would become a larger percentage of the company than it was previously. Since Apple is trading at over $40 per share now, not buying back the stock could signal that Apple Corp thinks it over valued at $40, does not want to drive the stock price higher, or simply is interested in investing the cash into R&D, merchandising, etc.
(10) Apple did have a truly wonderful quarter and it is a shame we will never know how it would have faired with a larger suply of iMac G4 or quicker availability of the iMac G5.
I only came here to do two things; kick some ass, and drink some beer...looks like we're almost out of beer.
*rolleyes*
/seriously/ claiming that, at a time when Apple had about 3 billion in cash, a 200 million "injection" "saved" them?
Are you
Apple wasn't bankrupt in '97, nor anywhere near it. They simply lacked focus.
However, the investment was a very big deal, and did help stabilize Apple's position. The reasons are far less simple than you are suggesting, though.
It showed that a big player thought Apple was worth investing it. It promised five years of Office updates. It stopped multiple lawsuits between the two companies. This helped reassure people that Apple wasn't going anywhere, but it was about much more than the money.
Also, as I understand it, Microsoft sold off that non-voting stock years ago, and is no longer making any money off of the deal.
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Debeleaguered? Unbeleaguerble?
10. Can't survive without Microsoft's Cash Infusion
9. Have no hope of selling into "the Enterprise"
8. Sell hardware for too much
7. Are really a Software Company
6. Are really a Hardware Company
5. Can never equal the market share of Microsoft
4. can never equal the market share of Dell or (heh) Gateway
3. Their retail strategy will sink them (see reference in #4)
2. They don't give it away like Linux
and the Number one
1. One Button Mouse.
(Did I miss any?)
Thanks, I'll be here all week, try the veal.
Actually, Apple's building market share on low prices but its in markets you're probably not paying attention to. Final Cut Pro won its position based in part on its low price. Apple's 1U servers and RAID farms provide incredible performance and storage density in their class all for competitive or downright low prices. As Xsan comes out and people realize they can take 20-40% off their SAN storage budget by using XServe/XRaid products and plugging them into their existing Filenet SAN infrastructure, Apple's going to start being a real presence in the enterprise. That growth is going to keep Apple alive during the transition when Jobs inevitably retires in a decade or three.