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Apple Crushes Expectations, Sees Record Holiday Quarter (axios.com)
Apple on Thursday reported sales and earnings well ahead of projections, and said holiday sales should be a record and ahead of many analysts' expectations. The company sold 46.6 million iPhones last quarter, which came in about 500,000 units ahead of expectations. Axios reports: Going into the earnings report, there were concerns about both iPhone 8 demand and iPhone X supply. Thursday's report should go a long way toward answering those questions. Sales were up in every region expect Japan, where business was down from the prior year, though up sequentially. Notably, the company finally saw a much-needed turnaround in Greater China, where sales of $9.8 billion were up 22% from the prior quarter and 12% from a year ago. The company's business has been weak in China for some time, though the company had predicted improvement this quarter. Apple reported $52.6 billion in revenue (vs $51.2 billion estimated) and per-share earnings of $2.02 (vs $1.87 estimated). In addition to the 46.6 million iPhones sold (vs 46.1 million estimated), the company sold 10.3 million iPads (vs about 10 million expected) and 5.4 million Macs (vs about 5 million expected).
A $1000 machine that turns them into a talking poop emoji.
4th of July and Labor Day is all i've got.
Probably the same kind of accounting they are doing in Ireland.
See subject: Upsetting naysayers 'objections' BLOWING THEM DOWN/AWAY, lol...
* Hi Gord!
APK
P.S.=> Uncle Al gives you the "high 5" boy... apk
So I can't help wondering about the REAL costs of Apple's profits. No, I don't think Apple is destroying the planet to the degree that the Koch brothers and Exxon do. No, I don't think Apple is an evil empire like Microsoft was in its monopolistic and abusive heyday. I actually think the google has much more potential for cancerous and evil growth than Apple does, but the jury is still out and I don't want to ignore Apple's ability to create profitable fashion stampedes around peculiar fads.
And yet, I recall the recent story about the engineer who lost his job and possibly his career because his daughter visited him at the office and took a naughty picture of a new iPhone. Seems like a somewhat evil prioritization of profits over people.
In general I think tax policy should favor freedom over profit. Extreme profits tend to involve monopolies or other choice-reducing systems that cut into freedom. A progressive profits tax would encourage highly successful to reproduce into competing companies. The current profits-uber-alles tax system only encourages cancerous growth.
Also, I think smaller government must be predicated upon smaller companies. Soulless, huge, immoral, and immortal companies running amok in search of infinite profits without any control is one of the worst scenarios I can image.
Freedom = (Meaningful - Coerced) Choice != (Speech | Beer^2), and sad sock puppets' bad mods avail them naught.
Suck it Androids!!!!
Pedophile's delight! I luv Apple!
Apple is in the business of selling hardware, not selling your data. That plus creating a premium experience translates to a device that people will pay a premium to get.
What's the difference between "Soulless, huge, immoral, and immortal companies running amok in search of infinite profits without any control" and the US federal government?
Apple made a few tens of billions and probably avoided paying some taxes. The feds rake in trillions each year, murder foreigners at will, invade other sovereign nations, imprison innocent people without trial, encourage local entities to engage in civil asset forfeiture which is tantamount to theft, craft laws and regulations that continually harm small business owners and anyone who dares to confront those in power, tie up court cases for years even decades, impose hefty taxes on individuals and businesses, pollute local areas due to poor environmental management, and yet somehow we keep electing the same tools over and over again.
(yes, all of these things happened during Barack Obama's tenure as President as well as his successor and predecessors. They would have continued under Hillary Clinton as well)
As history has shown, there is little difference between huge governments run amok and huge corporations run amok. See: East India Company.
46 million iPhones, That's a lot of drop test videos.
Aww, look another loser who shorted Apple after Jobs died. How'd you like the new all time high this week? Suck it.
I'm an Apple / iPhone hater, but Google and Android desperately need some legit competition. This can only be good for the marketplace.
A government is a body of people notably ungoverned - AC
I read an interesting comment on a business site: the success of the iPhoneX will be felt by other retailers this Q4 and upcoming Q1, more so than previous iPhones. Expectation is that many will say: “I just bought a $1000 phone, I will delay buying a new jeans trousers.”
Honestly the wording of the summary could be improved, what it really should say is Apple PREDICTS (not sees) a record holiday quarter - they gave a forecast of $84-$87 billion for this upcoming quarter ... which would be a record holiday quarter.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
The latest news is that third parties can nab face scan data on the new Iphone x
That s completely technically wrong. iOS apps have no access to FaceID data - which remember would include some 30k dots per however many samplings they take as you rotate your face around twice while setting up FaceID.
What developers have access to is a depth map from front and rear cameras - but it is much less detailed, and there's no way to use it to authenticate. Remember Apple themselves created 3D face masks to try and fool FaceID, in order to ensure that approach would not work...
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
I'm sure the denizens of /. are horrified that pr0n sites can use FaceID to track your O face across their platforms...with their consent.
A $1000 machine that turns them into a talking poop emoji.
Honestly, how can you not think that 3 out of four third graders would pay anything if they could make a talking poop emoji movie.
Heck MAYBE if talking poop tells them to clean their rooms, they will actually do it.
You must be hanging out with the dour Unicode Standard guys.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
They transfer their IP to an Irish wholly owned subsidiary and the parent company licenses it back based on a percentage of revenue. This brings their US tax down to 3%.
That plus creating a premium experience translates to they're were kind enough to lubed you up first.
by TheSpoom (715771) Uncaring Linux user here. I have nothing to add to this but please continue. *munches popcorn*
The firing was pretty much justified; that was clearly violating NDAs and security policy letting your adult daypughter take a video of a "secret" space.
As for splitting Apple... are they "too big to fail?" Are they monopolists, dominating a sector? Are they a national security risk? Moreover, for shareholders, are the parts worth more than the sum?
My take is that they have some solid segments, but nothing that dominates. They are extremely weak in some areas that could be a problem in a few years compared to their competitors. This makes them stronger as a large entity.
Slasdot goes crazy,
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
We should start by seeing the government divide itself. It is ludicrous to think that 535 people in one city can or should rule 300 million people. This madness will come to an end, like all empires, when the economics finally catches up. But we would be better off if we had secession now. We could start by dividing the US into 8-10 smaller countries and then keep going from there.
Apple has a ban on any videoing in their office period. His daughter whoâ(TM)s 26 broke the rule.
The better it goes for Apple, the more inflexible and capricious it becomes, and the less it listens to people. If we go by Microsoft as an example, bad times made it become nicer.
His career? He already has a new job. And yeah, he got fired because his daughter visited him. Eyeroll.
And yet, I recall the recent story about the engineer who lost his job and possibly his career because his daughter visited him at the office and took a naughty picture of a new iPhone. Seems like a somewhat evil prioritization of profits over people.
Welcome to capitalism. Apple sells hype, the engineer gave the hype away for free, this interferes with Apple's core business model so they let him go. Nothing could be more capitalistic — capitalism being defined as capital controlling the means of production.
I think smaller government must be predicated upon smaller companies. Soulless, huge, immoral, and immortal companies running amok in search of infinite profits without any control is one of the worst scenarios I can image.
Once upon a time, you had to actually justify an application for a corporate charter. It should provide value to The People, or it should not be permitted to exist. You can do all the same stuff that you do with corporations with co-ops, though it is more complicated in some cases. Meanwhile, corporatism makes it much easier to hide corruption, because corporations are literally legal fictions which exist to separate the guilty from responsibility.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
As history has shown, there is little difference between huge governments run amok and huge corporations run amok. See: East India Company.
The various &;lt;insert nationality here> &;lt;insert region or nation here here> companies were able to do what they did because their home governments extended to them the right to borrow their monopoly on force. When governments do their job and keep corporations in check, not least by preventing them from exercising violence instead of actually condoning it as in your example, they have far less ability to do harm.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
And yet, I recall the recent story about the engineer who lost his job and possibly his career because he breached written and well understood company policy
FTFY. If you think Apple is bad for *this* reason your priorities and understanding are seriously messed up.
As a matter of interest I do wonder what the East India Company did that was different from any government policy of the day. I mean I know about the general warfare and slavery but that was generally accepted at the time and not really attributable to differences in government vs mega corporations.
I wonder what type of games they're playing with the books to make this happen.
Cute. I'm an accountant and I've seen zero evidence that Apple is cooking the books. Every indication is that they are simply moving a lot of product and getting very handsome margins on that product.
It's well known that without Jobs Apple has already started going into the meat grinder.
Someone should tell Apple because they are moving more product than ever and profits are UP. People have this bizarre notion that Apple should be releasing some new world changing technology every 18 months. If you look at their history they tend to have about one big idea every 10-15 years or so. The 70s was the Apple II. The 80s was the Mac. The 90s was the Newton (which flopped) and the Powerbook. The 2000s was the iPod and the most recent decade or so was the iPhone/iPad (which are the same device really). What will Apple do next? We should know in the next few years. In the mean time they are doing fine and there is little evidence to suggest they are in any danger of decline. Not to mention that they have a ludicrous amount of cash in the bank - enough to buy both Ford and GM outright in cash if they wanted to.
I have no doubt they can keep this up maybe for decades (Jobs did leave a bank of ideas) but Apple in the end is headed towards the toilet. Just like the last time Jobs left them.
While losing a visionary leader certainly is a big loss, there is no evidence to reflexively assume Apple is going to turn into a dumpster fire without him. Companies don't succeed or fail based on a single person. The question is how well Jobs did in succession planning and in setting up robust management systems. If Jobs did a good job of that then Apple will be fine just like other large successful companies. Part of the reason Apple struggled without him the first time is that they were still a rather young company in a new industry. A lot of the problems Apple had in the 80s and 90s were actually caused by Jobs. Jobs leaving the company probably made him a better leader than he would have been had he stayed.
The headline is hyperbolic in the extreme.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
Cute. I'm an accountant and I've seen zero evidence that Apple is cooking the books. Every indication is that they are simply moving a lot of product and getting very handsome margins on that product.
Unless you are a (very) high level accountant at Apple, I don't see how you could possibly know whether they are cooking the books or not. They're not going to publish anything egregiously wrong like claiming sales of 5 million iPhones in the Principality of Liechtenstein (pop. 37,000).
No one predicted the collapse of Enron or RBS by looking at their published accounts.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
That's because corporations get their charter from the government - they are fictitious entities of law which derive all of their power directly from the government. We call them "private", but really they act at the behest of government - which can make arbitrary regulations and interfere in any way they choose.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
And yet, I recall the recent story about the engineer who lost his job and possibly his career because his daughter visited him at the office and took a naughty picture of a new iPhone. Seems like a somewhat evil prioritization of profits over people.
The engineer in question should have known that sharing that information was verboten. He almost certainly signed agreements to that effect. That engineer cut his own throat by disclosing trade secrets of his employer. ANY company in a similar position would have to do the same thing and that is the proper and responsible course of action. Otherwise they send a message that they don't really care about whether people disclose company secrets. We're not talking about some sort of toxic waste dump coverup here. We're talking about carelessly hurting the economic well being of the company and the people who depend on that company. He screwed up. He knows he screwed up. And he got fired for cause. You don't share secrets, even with family. He could easily have prevented the problem by not sharing the phone with his daughter who really is blameless. She was just an enthusiastic kid who got her hands on a new toy and behaved predictably like children do. That has nothing to do with prioritizing profits over people. Those profits actually support the livelihoods of many thousands of people and this idiot engineer needlessly endangered that.
Apple is in the business of selling hardware, not selling your data.
While it is undeniable that Apple does make money selling hardware, they aren't really a hardware company. They are a software company and this is something Steve Jobs understood a long time ago. They really make their money selling software. The hardware is simply the means by which they sell their software. The hardware on a Mac is in reality barely different from a Dell or HP computer. The iPhone hardware is barely different from numerous Android phones. Put Windows on a Mac or Android on an iPhone and customers would leave Apple faster than you can say "shareholder lawsuit". The hardware is what facilitates the sale but what people really are buying is the software and that is what they pay a premium for.
Think of it this way. Companies keep the valuable parts of the business. Apple doesn't not manufacture hardware so hardware is obviously not the core of their business. They functions they kept in house are software development and hardware design. The hardware design is simply to facilitate selling the software by putting it in a pretty and well designed box.
And at least so far you are right that Apple does appear to in general be responsible with customer data and privacy. So far... And the reason they can do that is that they haven't needed to get into the ad business to maintain their margins. It's actually one of the reasons I have an iPhone instead of Android. It's not that I think the Android system is bad (it's better in many ways) but Google develops Android specifically so that they can continue to make money with their core advertising business which does not and cannot respect my privacy and data. It's a built in conflict of interest that is not in my favor. I'm actually willing to pay Apple a more to avoid that issue. Your mileage may vary of course.
That plus creating a premium experience translates to a device that people will pay a premium to get.
Correct. And the basis of that experience is software. If Apple sold their software through others they would probably look a lot like Microsoft in a best case scenario. Instead they are a little more vertically integrated to differentiate their products because operating systems tends to be a winner take all sort of business. Had they taken Microsoft's playbook probably one or the other of them would have died years ago. Had they taken the approach of selling hardware with someone else's software they would be nothing more than another me-too vendor of PCs even in the best case scenario and their margins would be a LOT thinner.
Isnt it a amazing how people will lie and make the stupidest claims to defend poor apple? That is the power of their cult.
Do you mean "exceeds expectations", or some other actually correct term? Idiots.
"crushes" means "to destroy", so this would mean that Apple had massively UNDERperformed. Did I mention that you were illiterate idiots here at Slashdot?
Unless you are a (very) high level accountant at Apple, I don't see how you could possibly know whether they are cooking the books or not. They're not going to publish anything egregiously wrong like claiming sales of 5 million iPhones in the Principality of Liechtenstein (pop. 37,000).
The simple fact is that it is plainly obvious that they are selling a LOT of iPhones and selling them at price points that are higher than most Android devices. Since they don't cost more to make then it's a pretty simple logical leap that their business model simply works.
No one predicted the collapse of Enron or RBS by looking at their published accounts.
Did you actually look at the financial statements of Enron? I did. They were the most (intentionally as it turned out) incomprehensible mountain of obfuscation you've ever read. They were written to be effectively incomprehensible even to experts at reading such financial statements. The signs were there and there were people pointing out the concerns even prior to the revelation that it was a huge fraud. Apple's financial statements (which I have also read) are NOTHING like Enron's. While they don't provide unlimited detail, they are pretty straight forward as these things go.
Sure Apple could in theory be covering up a fraud but you could say that about any company. The simple fact is that you have ZERO evidence to suggest Apple is doing anything other than selling a lot of product for a good margin. People love their products and it is clear that they are selling millions of them. Furthermore we can see their supply chain with reasonable clarity and all the evidence there backs up the thesis that they are moving a huge amount of product. If that strains your credulity then by all means provide us with a thesis and evidence with anything to back it up. Otherwise you are simply wasting our time.
1% better is "Crushing"? We need mods who can count.
This is the most measured and informed response to a statement such as you replied to that I've ever seen. Kudos.
No Apple does not transfer their IP to Ireland, and they do not have a 3% tax rate on US sales. What they donâ(TM)t do is bring back cash from foreign sales so it can get charged at a 45% tax rate. Apple for the last 3-5 years has been one of the top tax paying companies in the US, and contributes far more to the US economy then probably all Android makers combined.
While you can argue that they avoid some taxes in EU by having those sales go through Ireland, to avoid corporate taxes, the EU countries are still making crazy amounts of tax revenue off Apple products because of VAT which gets collected on every sale.
So he canâ(TM)t know Apple is above the board, because he isnâ(TM)t an accountant at Apple, but itâ(TM)s ok for you to insinuate fraud because you donâ(TM)t like them and are angry they are claiming record profits?
How I miss the good old days, where no one ever interpreted 1% as "crushing it"—unless it was a 1% uptick occurring in under 24 hours. Even by this standard, in any given issue of PC Magazine twenty different Taiwanese upstarts would be outed as crushing it since the last breathless thud.
These days, The 1% is reliably crushing it, but that's a different matter.
I no fan of Apple, Google or Microsoft these days, but comparing them to the East India Company is a bit of stretch. The EIC had private armies and took over most of India. In fact it was the de facto government of India until the UK government intervened and shut it down.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
During its first century of operation, the focus of the company was trade, not the building of an empire in India. Company interests turned from trade to territory during the 18th century as the Mughal Empire declined in power and the East India Company struggled with its French counterpart, the French East India Company (Compagnie francaise des Indes orientales) during the Carnatic Wars of the 1740s and 1750s. The Battle of Plassey and Battle of Buxar, in which the British, led by Robert Clive, defeated the Indian powers, left the company in control of Bengal and a major military and political power in India. In the following decades it gradually increased the extent of the territories under its control, ruling the whole Indian subcontinent either directly or indirectly via local puppet rulers under the threat of force by its Presidency armies, much of which were composed of native Indian sepoys.
By 1803, at the height of its rule in India, the British East India company had a private army of about 260,000â"twice the size of the British Army.[5] The company eventually came to rule large areas of India with its private armies, exercising military power and assuming administrative functions.[6] Company rule in India effectively began in 1757 and lasted until 1858, when, following the Indian Rebellion of 1857, the Government of India Act 1858 led to the British Crown's assuming direct control of the Indian subcontinent in the form of the new British Raj.
echo -e 'global _start\n _start:\n mov eax, 2\n int 80h\n jmp _start' > a.asm; nasm a.asm -f elf; ld a.o -o a;
I wonder what type of games they're playing with the books to make this happen. It's well known that without Jobs Apple has already started going into the meat grinder.
I have no doubt they can keep this up maybe for decades (Jobs did leave a bank of ideas) but Apple in the end is headed towards the toilet. Just like the last time Jobs left them.
Jobs has been gone over 4 years now. To give you an idea how long in "Apple Years" that is, the iPhone 4s came out JUST as Jobs died. That's like EIGHT iPhone generations ago...
I kinda doubt that any amount of "book-juggling" would hide "the truth" from EVERYONE for that long.
No "meat grinder". Just stellar products that everyone but Haters seem to really like...
A lot of the problems Apple had in the 80s and 90s were actually caused by Jobs. Jobs leaving the company probably made him a better leader than he would have been had he stayed.
Truer words were never spoken, and if Jobs was around, I think he would agree at least with the second statement, at least...
Are you high?
Nope. Don't drink either.
Employing a Contract Manufacturer to do the soldering and assembly doesn't make you a "non-manufacturer" of your Hardware products.
Actually it does mean exactly that. Apple does not manufacture their products and has not for a long time. Therefore they are not a manufacturer by definition. Nothing wrong with that but you have to actually manufacture something to be called a manufacturer.
EVERYONE employs Contract Manufacturers. It's just a matter of economic efficiency, since the facilities and equipment are specialized and quite costly.
I am the GM for a (small) contract manufacturing company. I assure you I understand how it works better than you do. If you outsource 100% of your manufacturing then you are by definition not a manufacturer. Companies like Dell and HP contract out some production but they also make a substantial amount of their products themselves. Apple currently makes near as makes no difference none of their hardware nor do the assemble hardware made by others. The do design a lot of it but designing a product does not make one a manufacturer.
> Cute. I'm an accountant and I've seen zero evidence that Apple is cooking the books
You don't have to look far to see how these guys don't miss an opportunity to bend the rules in their favor. It's no secret that the EU still wants the $14B in taxes Ireland never collected from Apple.
Obviously Apple can afford better cooks than you think you could get away with.
> While losing a visionary leader certainly is a big loss, there is no evidence to reflexively assume Apple is going to turn into a dumpster fire without him
No evidence, except for Apple's own history.
> Part of the reason Apple struggled without him the first time is that they were still a rather young company in a new industry
But Apple wasn't a young company in a new industry by 1997, which is when MS bailed them out from bankruptcy with a $150M investment.
While I agree with you in some places, I think you're kind of misled on this "capitalism" thing. Next you'll be trying to convince me that "communism" still exists (or ever existed outside of Marx's dreams).
I think the best description of what we have now is "corporate cancerism". I would even argue that cancerism is the natural outcome of attempting to reduce all value to the single dimension of profit.
Freedom = (Meaningful - Coerced) Choice != (Speech | Beer^2), and sad sock puppets' bad mods avail them naught.
No, I know Apple is bad, even EVIL, to put money ahead of human beings. I think you are seriously messed up, but perhaps you can explain to me exactly why you "think" Apple needs another billion dollars of profit? Last I heard Apple was simply sitting on an obscene amount of cash in the bank.
My preliminary theory is that you have delusions of getting a billion of your own and mostly you fantasize about what you would do to other people when you had the kind of power that comes with that kind of money. I call that SERIOUSLY messed up.
Freedom = (Meaningful - Coerced) Choice != (Speech | Beer^2), and sad sock puppets' bad mods avail them naught.
I no fan of Apple, Google or Microsoft these days, but comparing them to the East India Company is a bit of stretch.
I didn't make that comparison. I don't consider Apple, Microsoft, or Google to qualify yet as having run amok. But put a money-mad psychopath in charge of any of them, and you've got a problem. The potential to run amok is there.
The East India Company wasn't running amok though. Parliament granted it a charter which gave it a monopoly on trade in a big chunk of the world. The EIC then acted inside that charter which gave it more or less absolute power in the area the charter applied from the perspective of the UK government. If any other state quibbled with that absolute power, the EIC was empowered to raise armies and fight them.
Of course the advantage to the UK government was that if the shit ever hit the fan and the EIC did something the UK government didn't like, the UK government could blame the EIC and potentially disestablish it. Which eventually happened when the Indian Rebellion happened. The UK government decided to blame all the nastiness on the EIC, revoke its charter and rule directly.
In Dune terms the UK government was Baron Harkonnen and the EIC was Beast Rabban - i.e. a rapacious leader who'd subjugate territory and then be replaced by someone else who'd seem like a relief.
http://villains.wikia.com/wiki...
In the aftermath of the Harkonnen attack on the House of Atreides on Arrakis that nearly destroyed the House, Rabban was left in charge of Arrakis by his uncle. Harkonnen gave him orders to squeeze the populace, and to set new lows in cruelty and depraved behavior. Harkonnen's intention was that when the people of Arrakis were crushed enough that he would send Feyd to save the people of Arrakis, and become a hero to the people there.
Well I'm not sure the UK government planned ahead that far. But having empire built by a quasi non governmental corporation was definitely a deliberate strategy that always allowed for the government to abolish the corporation and rule directly.
So the EIC isn't an example of an evil corporation slipping the reins of regulation, it's an example of an evil government using a corporation to do its dirty work in a way that could later be disavowed.
Well I'm simplifying a bit. Inside the UK government there were different factions, some that wanted a highly rapacious but disavowable entity in charge of India and some that want direct government control and enlightened imperialism. The former set up the EIC and the later eventually used the Indian Rebellion as an excuse to shut it down.
I suppose a US counterpart would be Blackwater in Iraq. Blackwater never got as large as the EIC though. At one point the EIC had a larger army than the UK had. Still at no point would it have occurred to the people who run the EIC to take on the UK militarily - the UK was always politically the master and the EIC a mere subcontractor.
echo -e 'global _start\n _start:\n mov eax, 2\n int 80h\n jmp _start' > a.asm; nasm a.asm -f elf; ld a.o -o a;
The East India Company wasn't running amok though. Parliament granted it a charter which gave it a monopoly on trade in a big chunk of the world. The EIC then acted inside that charter which gave it more or less absolute power in the area the charter applied from the perspective of the UK government. If any other state quibbled with that absolute power, the EIC was empowered to raise armies and fight them.
Not only is this running amok, it's a government and a corporation conspiring to run amok together. The worst of both worlds.
Well that's my point really. Corporations are very dangerous when they have a government to grant them the sort of power that EIC got.
echo -e 'global _start\n _start:\n mov eax, 2\n int 80h\n jmp _start' > a.asm; nasm a.asm -f elf; ld a.o -o a;