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Tim Cook Prefers Settling To Suing and Has a Huge Quarter
An anonymous reader writes "Apple's current legal battles with Samsung encapsulate a large number of patents, innumerable suits and counter-suits, and have resulted in legal motions in 11 jurisdictions across the globe. As you may remember, Steve Jobs in his biography was quite vocal about his intent to go thermonuclear on Android, vowing to spend every last dime in Apple's coffers to destroy Google's mobile OS. But Tim Cook is a bit more level headed about things, expressing during Apple's earnings conference call yesterday that he has has always hated litigation and would much rather settle than to battle in court. The caveat, of course, is that Cook doesn't want Apple to 'become the developer for the world.'" It may not be what Jobs would do, but as zacharye notes, it doesn't seem to be hurting earnings. "Despite early-morning jitters on Wall Street, Apple on Tuesday reported yet another blow-out quarter. The Cupertino, California-based company managed the second most profitable quarter in its history, posting a net profit of $11.6 billion on $39.2 billion in sales. Apple sold 35.1 million iPhones into channels last quarter, along with 11.8 million iPads, 7.7 million iPods and 4 million Mac computers. While the firm continues to dominate the technology industry — Apple is currently the most valuable company in the world — several analysts think Apple is just getting started."
Developer for the world sounds like a bit of a tall claim.
Apple really don't invent much new stuff. What they are excellent at is combining existing, often poorly implemented, inventions into very well polished consumer products. That's their business and they're very good at it.
But, it shouldn't be subject to patent protection, and their patents tend to be dubious at best.
The other thing is that patents or not, it's an extremely hard thing to copy.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
To bad the summory missed the best quote of the conference call
Finally, one analyst dared ask a question about Apple's litigation battles when it comes to patents. "I've always hated litigation and I continue to hate it," Cook said, but "we just want people to invent their own stuff."
He is still an arrogant ass (yes I will probably lose some karma for that one)
Ah, you've been digging up pundit's predictions from 2002, I see.
Anyone who loves or hates any language, platform, or manufacturer, doesn't know what they're talking about.
Your post doesn't make any sense. You can't accumulate, store, or access data without hardware. Advertising is a different industry than the ones Apple chiefly participates in (iAd being a mere blip on their earnings report). Apple's products are not viewed as commodities by the market, which is why they command huge margins--margins that went up year over year if you bothered to read the earnings report. Apple's products have been copied and copied again and they still maintain premium status in the eyes of the consumer--margins haven't been destroyed and there's no reason to think they will be in the near term.
(%i1) factor(777353);
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"Settle" translation: We want Google to pay us lots and lots of money for OUR ideas (which we took from everyone who came before us -- and never paid for.).
several analysts think Apple is just getting started
I find this particularly interesting since I would assume that market penetration should be causing their growth to slow -- hell they did worse than they did last quarter which, although still good, is a sign they're slowing somewhat, right? So I looked it up on this BGR blog site and it appears that only one analyst thinks so, Brian White. Can anyone provide several other analysts who thing "Apple is just getting started"?
I also found some of Brian White's quotes to be less than analytical:
“Apple fever rocks on”
and
"Apple fever is spreading like a wildfire around the world and we see no end in sight to this trend"
I hate to engage in character assassination but that really doesn't sound like any of the analyst reports I've ever read. They're usually dry as hell and stick to the numbers. Numbers numbers numbers, usually that's all that matters. Anyone got numbers on market penetration instead of telling me "Apple fever has no end in sight"?
My work here is dung.
Simple really. It's the Golden Rule.
He who has the gold, rules.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
And what makes you think they'll stop inventing new devices?
As someone involved the tech world in exactly this "data is king" business model, I can tell you from direct experience that there's a hard limit on the value of data, and that's the value placed on it by business consumers. To quote the Calgary Flames marketing department, "we don't give a shit about surveying our customers". And they don't. They know who their customers are, what their demographic profile is, etc. They cared about (and used) our product because it offered another avenue of engagement, which is a separate concern.
Everyone involved in the data side always spins great fantasies about precision marketing and deep knowledge of your customers, without acknowledging that in many cases, deep knowledge isn't even useful or worth paying for because it doesn't increase engagement or conversion rates or redemption ratios. Remember Xmarks, the bookmarks plugin people who thought there'd be tremendous value in having an aggregate-able database of everyone's bookmarks? They built that database, and then ran out of money because no one wanted to do anything with it. They were saved only because someone else saw an opportunity to sell a premium version of their plugin.
I'm not saying data's worthless, by any means. But it's not particularly valuable in and of itself.
Anyone who loves or hates any language, platform, or manufacturer, doesn't know what they're talking about.
Inertia?
What happens when all the people Jobs hired start drifting away?
I see AAPL as too late to buy and too early to short. It looks like a bubble, but it's PE and other metrics aren't too bubbly. At some point, the iDevice market share will saturate. They'll cut prices to fight that, the market will mistakenly regard that as a favorable move rather than a death gasp, and then it will be time to short.
But that's just do to slick marketing to brain dead fanbois who'd buy a dead fish and hold it up to their head if it had an apple logo on the side. It's all about the apple logo. There can be no other possible explination for why everyone eles in the world would buy stuff that smart people on slashdot know is crapple.
More like Jobs had a huge quarter. Once Tim's been in charge and the germinating seeds Jobs planted aren't still coming to fruition, Tim can go ahead and take the credit. If, in a few years, the company is still making money hand over fist, I'll salute him. Right now it's Thanks Steve. RIP