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Apple Posts $18B Quarterly Profit, the Highest By Any Company, Ever
jmcbain writes: Yesterday, Apple reported its financial results for the quarter ending December 27, 2014. The company posted $18 billion in profit (on $74 billion in revenue), the largest quarterly profit by any company, ever. The previous record was $16 billion by Russia's Gazprom (the largest natural gas extractor in the world) in 2011. Apple sold 74.5 million iPhones last quarter, along with 5.5 million Macs and 21.4 million iPads.
Can't even buy a decent lemonade for less than $2 these days I tell ya what.
I wonder which country Apple are paying tax on that profit?
Oh wait, they are based in Ireland and pay no tax at all. Silly me.
Be nice if they paid their taxes since they are rolling in cash. They keep a vast fortune off-shore just to avoid US taxes on profits, and screw Europe in the same way.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
Here is the proof!
25% mark up for an OEM is pretty envious, especially in the electronic market where usual retail markup is less than 10%!
Most profitable cult ever.
Those are amazing numbers. It shows that by making bug-free products, offering long term support, providing great value, acting fully ethically, and listening to your customers, can make you a fair amount of money. Their secret sauce? Bringing the real engineers to the spotlight.
Apple arguably makes the best phones and when using Android phones you notice little things here and there that aren't quite a nice, but these are rather rare and mostly insignificant.
It feels strange that Apple is making such a profit with a rather smallish that may be 12% of the market and no particularly eye-popping new products since the Steve Jobs era, just a series of well-engineered refinements.
Then again, certain shoe and apparel companies do this and have done this for decades. Seems odd to see this in technology sector that historically has been very market-share, volume and dominance oriented. However historically, this was the method employed since the early days of Apple (premium pricing).
Priest: "Universe from nothing, no laws of physics, sped up time"+ huge discrepancies. Creationism? No. Big Bang Theory
And they paid $12 in taxes.
That is 24%. That means your device could be 20% cheaper and they would STILL make more money then anybody else in percentage per product in the electronics world.
So instead of 500USD for the Ipad2, you could be paying 400USD and they would still make money.
And some people don't think Apple is overpriced.
I bet the before and after tax is the same. Legal? Yes. Moral? Nope.
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
All it means is that you pay WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAYYYYYYYYYYYYY too much for their products.......
meanwhile: chinese workers slowly die, economies in crisis because of missing tax money, trash piles, heavy energy consumption.
It's time to stop this madness and bring out phones that last 4 years minimum.
It just goes to prove no one is irreplaceable; not even Jobs.
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
Guess, how they are most profitable? Obviously nothing to do with overcharging you, NOHOHO, NOT AT ALL.
The highest by any publicly traded company, you mean. I'm pretty sure Saudi Aramco is at the top with annual profits estimated at a whooping $182 billion. Where else do you think the terrorists and the Bush family keep getting all that money from?
Imagine all the money Apple pays in taxes - that has to have a beneficial effect on the US economy and citizens.
I live since a few years in Asia (first Singapore, now Hong Kong). 3 years ago I saw lots of people with iphones in de metro, gradually this shifted to mainly big Samsung phablets which are really popular here. Switcher friends told me that they liked their iphone 4/4S but they simply like a bigger screen more.
Now, the iPhone 6 Plus is (very visibly in the metro) stealing customers back from the Android camp, often these are switching back buyers.
I did ask a few colleagues about their switch back, the general opinion is that while they needed to unlearn a few Android habits, they thought that the Apple gear worked very well, and (ALWAYS a factor mentioned by the lady colleagues) they thought that the iphone was simply a beautiful, elegant device.
I upgraded 2 months ago from a 4S to the 6 Plus myself. I am not so impressed by hateful online arguments (nor do I have a problem with Android phones), and it must be said that it works indeed very smoothly. It is still just about portable and the comfort has made me almost abandon my old ipad (between the 6Plus, and the small MAcbook Air the ipad sits now a bit uncomfortably). Also, the camera is remarakable. Without doing scientific tests, I have the impression that the general image quality is akin to my old Nikon D200 (without the nice bokeh of course), the pictures are more than good enough for most casual uses.
Your product can be clearly inferior hardware and be much more expensive than the competition, but if your product is considered a status symbol that lets you win rich partners, so it sells no matter the price.
Religion: The greatest weapon of mass destruction of all time
Corrected for inflation, it isn't.
It's a quarterly profit announcement, not for the year.
So the real questions are what is the declared profit / loss for the entire year and how much actual tax are they actually paying on the year?
blindly antisocialist = antisocial
$18 billion profit, but they can't afford to make their phones in a country with decent labour laws. Nope, can't do it. The numbers just don't add up I tell you. Apple are the apotheosis of psychopathic corporate greed, at the expense of any human decency.
He said: "I am not so impressed by hateful online arguments"
"The tortoise lays on its back, its belly baking in the hot sun, beating its legs trying to turn itself over, but it can't. Not without your help. But you're not helping. "
Why aren't you helping?
Priest: "Universe from nothing, no laws of physics, sped up time"+ huge discrepancies. Creationism? No. Big Bang Theory
Of all their profits they are no longer reinvesting, they still will not pay dividends. A stock that never pays dividends is simply a really expensive baseball card.
When you realize Apple makes a lot of iPhones and it becomes clear that Apple has basically become a smartphone company. The iPods are now dead, thanks to the iPhone, the iPad has shrunk in sales thanks in part to the bigger iPhones, and yet Mac sales have increased most likely because of the disaster of Windows 8 and because some people found tablets to be less then ideal for everything. Which is why tablets have always been a non replacement for the computer.
But what happens to Apple if they lose their mojo in iPhones? Because all this talk about new innovation from Apple has simply not happened. The first new product since the iPad is the Apple watch and many already believe its simply a non starter as the next big thing. Of course some of the Apple flock will buy anything Apple but I do see and read plenty of Apple loyalists questioning Apple's vision for the future.
He said 4% profit (what is left over after all other investments and costs) not 4% margins (what is left over after you subtract only manufacturing costs from sales). Operating on 4% profit is doable, retailers do it all the time. No one runs a business on 4% margin.
They announced dividends and have been paying them for several years now.
then you can reap great profits. Remember, profits and margins are all that matter. The world, and the EU in particular, should make sure Apple pay their taxes, or forbid them from entering the markets.
Amazon: .1% operating margin.
Apple: 29.3% operating margin.
Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.
Ernest Hemingway
Too bad they have no place in business.
Great work everybody. If we all get behind this we can make next quarter even bigger!
Seriously, why is this guy's comment flamebait? Apple does this. They move billions of euros through Ireland to avoid paying any taxes.
I find it curious that so many Slashdoters have no problem when a company uses all the advantages of society and yet refuses to contribute to keeping the society going. In this case, literally racking in billions upon billions in profit while barely contributing to the tax base.
Why do you think this is a good thing?
I work for a small company. We have only about 80 people. So, while we may not make as many jobs as Apple does we do pay our taxes. We also still have a profit.
That's what happens when idiots are tricked into thinking that 37 cents worth of plastic and silicon is worth 500 to 600 USD.
You're fooling yourselves if you think Apple makes anything decent these days.
VW did 16 billion EUR. That's more than 18 bil $$$.
....the iPhone sheeple keeping Crapple alive...
Apple *does* pay a stock dividend. Has since 2012 (except for the quarter where they had the 7-for-1 stock split).
And the accuracy of your post goes *down* hill from there...
I just wish Apple would use a small fraction of that profit to rewrite itunes, from scratch.
I think the quality of comments here is deteriorating. I wonder why no one is asking what special thing happened this last quarter for them to earn this much?
are you suggesting that he may be a replicant?
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
Does your small company pay extra taxes just for fun?
It turns out that your are just wildly, fantastically wrong. Apple makes money by selling physical products that humans want.
Maybe now they can afford to toss a few more dollars towards their QA departments?
I used my iPhone 4s for over 3 years. I wasn't even going to replace it when the 6 came out, but then I left it in the pocket of my jeans and tossed it in the washing machine with the laundry. After taking it apart and drying it out, it still powered up, but both cameras and wifi were dead. I still use it as an alarm clock in my old Altec speaker dock.
Clearly.
In relatively recent times, there was no true consumer marketplace for computers or mobile phones -- it was business or homework. Microsoft Office, Blackberry (the corporate emails phone), consoles gaining capabilities and rendering the PC gaming segment tiny.
The consumer market emerged, with the decision making behind purchases for that sector being very different and only Apple sought (or had the acumen) to target it effectively.
Business spending is an expense (cheap, functional), consumer spending is an acquisition of a want.
Priest: "Universe from nothing, no laws of physics, sped up time"+ huge discrepancies. Creationism? No. Big Bang Theory
I have NEVER bought an overpriced Apple product and I wish no one would have started. I think they are all snobs anyway. Like Corvette (prick mobiles) owners
Wonder how much it cost to pay all the Foxconn staff for that quarter compared to Apple's profit?
Do they get a bonus?
Sad world of capitalism...
All it means is that you pay WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAYYYYYYYYYYYYY too much for their products.......
A seat in coach/economy will get you across the Pacific just as effectively as business or first. But some people want more than pure functionality. What's wrong with that if you can afford it?
And despite this, we will all be reading on comment boards for ever that those horrible oil company profits are why they need to be punished...
But we will hear no outrage at all about Apple's profits.
Why?
Because Apple is the darling of left (Amazing, given their factories in China)... Whereas the oil companies, why they give money to Rethugnicans, so they are evil beyond evil... So the next "progressive" that tells you how awesome APPLE is be sure and remind them that this means they love outsourcing, believe children should be exploited as slave labor, and that profit is absolutely grand.....
Murphy was an optimist
I know that I am a hater, but I would reject any products from a company making this kind of profit without paying taxes back to the society that created and supported it. In fact, we know that Apple uses its money to feed the 1% and has no interest in anyone (even and especially its customers) who is not on the top 10% of its shareholders. Steve would, truly, be proud. He built this with this goal and their achievement is his achievement more than anyone else.
Congratulations.
It's pretty simple: they don't feel ripped off. They feel they paid a high price for a product of high value. And they (very reasonably) conclude that if millions of other people paid a similar price for the same product, then they must have been right; the product was fairly priced for the value it contained.
Amazon famously lost money on every Fire phone it sold. Does that mean that the poor saps who bought it got a good deal? Of course not; they ended up with a crapy device. It's just a cheap crapy device. It ended up a disappointment to both seller and buyer.
I think you give the general population a bit too much credit. Have you watched the news lately? Or spoken to anyone...?
How much tax did Apple pay (1% - 2%??)? I suspect these profits are the result of global accountancy practices that avoid paying tax in almost every country they operate in.
Can we stop saying that only fanboys buy Apple products now?
It's pretty clear that mid America buy a shitload of Apple products; it's not a single, small demographic.
I don't care what you use for a phone or a computer, but your arguments no longer hold water.