Slashdot Mirror
Apple Says Profits Were Flat, Citing Slump In China (nytimes.com)
Due to an economic slowdown in China and diminishing demand for new iPhones, Apple's profits in its most recent quarter were flat compared with a year earlier. "The disappointing financial performance had been expected since Jan. 2, when Apple, for the first time in 16 years, revised its forecast for the quarter," reports The New York Times. "But the announcement on Tuesday indicates a difficult road head for Apple, which just five months ago became the first company to be worth more than $1 trillion. The company said it expected between $55 billion and $59 billion in revenue in the current quarter, just below analysts' expectations for $59 billion. Apple's earnings per share were $4.18, beating analysts' expectations by a penny."
In addition to the quarterly earnings, Apple reported revenue of $84.3 billion, a decline of 5 percent from one year ago. "Revenue from iPhone declined 15 percent from the prior year, while total revenue from all other products and services grew 19 percent," Apple said in a press release. Analysts had estimated revenue of $83.97 billion and earnings of $4.17 per share. "While it was disappointing to miss our revenue guidance, we manage Apple for the long term, and this quarter's results demonstrate that the underlying strength of our business runs deep and wide," said Tim Cook. Apple's active install base of 1.4 billion is "a great testament to the satisfaction and loyalty of our customers, and it's driving our services business to new records thanks to our large and fast-growing ecosystem," Cook said. The Verge adds: "iPhones account for 900 million of those devices. iPad revenues were up 17 percent against the year-ago quarter; Mac was up 9 percent; and Wearables/Home/Accessories were up by 33 percent."
In addition to the quarterly earnings, Apple reported revenue of $84.3 billion, a decline of 5 percent from one year ago. "Revenue from iPhone declined 15 percent from the prior year, while total revenue from all other products and services grew 19 percent," Apple said in a press release. Analysts had estimated revenue of $83.97 billion and earnings of $4.17 per share. "While it was disappointing to miss our revenue guidance, we manage Apple for the long term, and this quarter's results demonstrate that the underlying strength of our business runs deep and wide," said Tim Cook. Apple's active install base of 1.4 billion is "a great testament to the satisfaction and loyalty of our customers, and it's driving our services business to new records thanks to our large and fast-growing ecosystem," Cook said. The Verge adds: "iPhones account for 900 million of those devices. iPad revenues were up 17 percent against the year-ago quarter; Mac was up 9 percent; and Wearables/Home/Accessories were up by 33 percent."
Only 80 billion dollars in the months?
It's over.
I'd shut it down and give the money back to the shareholders.
Blame way overpriced flagshit devices. That was a typo but I think it plays. Does it play?
Sure, they increased the price of every single new iPhone, but I'm sure it was exclusively China and the Trade War that imposed zero tariffs on Apple products that is to blame (in fairness, China is very anti-US, and specifically pro-Chinese, especially when the US is actively anti-China).
It cannot have anything to do with the iPhone XR starting at $699 USD, iPhone XS starting at $999 USD, or the iPhone XS Max starting at $1099 USD. Given that the iPhone 8 -- the same tier as the iPhone XR -- was itself raised $50 to $649 USD from $599 USD for the iPhone 7, that's a lot of increases in a very short amount of time with no real justification beyond shortsighted greed. And now Tim Cook and Co are reaping the rewards -- massive profits on smaller unit sales because they aren't packing enough into the more expensive units to justify their price, which is the literally the first lesson in pricing yourself out of a market.
People in the US are not excited to pay those prices. I have zero reason to upgrade to an iPhone XS from my iPhone 8 beyond a nicer screen and modestly nicer camera, and the iPhone XR is just more money for the same phone with a faster processor.
In past years I was a pretty consistent 2 year cycle upgrader because I enjoyed the performance boost and camera improvements, but Google has taken the lead on software-based camera improvements without adding seven trillion lenses onto the back of the phone. I suspect that Apple will pump out a crappy iPhone XI this year that will be a modest bump over the iPhone XS, for $999 USD, possibly with USB-C (like the iPad Pro thankfully -- finally -- conformed to using!) and a third lens (or maybe they'll just put that on the "Max" variant for an extra $100 USD).
I will only upgrade if they can compete with Google's camera quality, particularly in dark shots. Otherwise I'm going to hold out until my iPhone 8 is on death's door because I have no interest in paying for a computer to get a phone, regardless of the merits of the processor. I don't want 2 or more lenses, I want software Google's Pixel camera at the price of a Google Pixel phone.
Amusingly the deepest tether keeping me on iOS is my Apple Watch. It feels amazing compared to every other smartwatch that I've tested and it only works with iOS. I think that Apple is going to have to try to open up future Apple Watch models to Android to get deeper market penetration, like they did with Apple Music, and I will get a Google Pixel if they ever make that leap.
You say peak smartphone is here, but what makes you think that? I don't see any sign that demand for smartphones is in any way lacking or declining. It only increases...
So he asks me things like "well, should I move into the browser coding area next?" &/or other areas of interest he has there to help PRESERVE his career
Learning Swift is still a career forward move and builds on the strong base he already has, even more-so is learning Python and Tensorflow. Even if it just wanted to stay at Apple that would be worthwhile...
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Look, you set the price too high. Just shift the price lower on the curve, and you can maximize your profit.
In a time when you're flooding the market with $1000 phones, reconsider your original $500 price point. You'll see that unit sales of the $800 version are ok, and the $500 model is doing very well, so you know you need to fire your marketing and sales teams who skipped out on basic accounting and economics classes.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
The problem with his comments is that they don't make sense when you look at how Apple got it's butt kicked in India. India is an untapped market; 2018 had 150M phones sold and over 1B people live there. But the market is not made for US$1,000 phones; it needs a product that fits India appropriately. Xiaomi launched a budget phone and a premium phone that cost in US$420 and they owned the market there.
Apple needs to get out of the Western world way of thinking and Western world prices. THe growth markets are India, China, and much of Southeast Asia (655M people across 11 countries), but their markets don't have room for a $1,000 phone.
I guess Apple prefer to externalize, and that's unfortunate.
If Apple were to internalize, they might realize that, for the past few years, they have been adding new features to the iPhone that people aren't really all that interested in. For example, a screen that covers the whole face of the phone, OLED screen that you have to run dark-mode on so you don't rip through your battery, animojie, AR/VR, and an inferior Intel radio.
At the same time, they have been removing features that people liked. For example, headphone jack, home button, thumbprint reader, and superior Qualcom radio.
As they're doing this, the phone's price is continuing to climb.
It's Apple's fault. Not China. Not Trump. They should do what Microsoft did with Vista when they knew they'd fucked up... Forget about new features. Go back and fix everything people hate and come out with the "Windows 7" of iPhones. The one everyone wanted in the first place with all the features they like and none of the features they hate or don't care about.
THIS is why people are worried about Apple going down hill. Until they're honest about why they had a bad year, they can't fix the real problems that caused it. Is anyone going to tell Tim? Or is it" The Emperor's New Clothes" over there at Apple?
Definitely not. By focussing on privacy they are differentiating themselves from Google, Facebook, and all of the others.
What they need to do is stop the strong focus on the iPhone. They had a huge lead in certain markets such as graphics design with their computers but they've completely lost it by not updating their Mac Pro line in years. Apple needs to really focus on their computer lines again, especially the Pro desktop. It would be great if they did something unique such as using their own CPUs in a desktop. They have experience transitioning platforms pretty smoothly (from PowerPC to Intel) and they could easily do it again. People will come back if Apple shows that they will stay focussed on the line. It will also help balance the revenue and stop it being so dependent on one product.
The other big thing they need to do is to break the releases of the iPhone and iOS. It's creating a period of a few months each year where the developers are racing to fix bugs because iOS was released too early in order to meet the schedule of the iPhone. Apple should break out a small group from the iOS developers and have them implement the functionality required for the new phones. This would be released as an update to the current release. Then the next release of iOS would get released when it was ready to go out. It's better for the users and much better for the developers.
No. Keeping user-data private is probably wining more hardware sales for them than the revenue garnered by user-data. Anyone who values their privacy at all goes Apple. It's not even up for debate with them. Tim does a great job there. Apple is not in the business of selling user data or access to anything by anyone not the user. Their balance sheet reflects that.
They only issued debt as a way to leverage that overseas cash for buybacks and dividends. With the tax law change that's no longer necessary, so they are no longer issuing new debt and it will shrink as the bonds mature.
But don't let facts interfere with your Apple hatred.
Apple had 0% growth, and Harley Davidson had actual 0% profit. Both due to the tariff nonsense. Your economy and China's are linked, supporting each other, growing together. Pursuing policy defined by hate of China is shooting both feet off and calling it good.
What you are suggesting would have developers scrambling twice a year - once for the hardware update and once for the OS update. The way its done now is better. Actually most people are keeping phones for 2 years so maybe they can move to releasing a flagship model every 2 years along with a well tested OS. the intervening year can be used to release cut price models with crippled functionality.
**Life is too short to be serious**
The stock market won't let them release a high-end model every two years. If you read carefully what I suggested there wouldn't be a huge rush for the iOS feature update because I said that they would release it when it was ready. They could announce it for release in a particular quarter when they were getting nearly done and then as they were completing items start narrowing down the release date always with the provision that if testing found something it could lead to delays. Apple could still announce the new iOS with the phones but say it will ship when it's ready.
Only the team that was updating iOS with changes to deal with new hardware changes and features would have the hard deadline. However that's a much smaller number of changes, mostly device drivers. Many of the things announced are features of iOS. I'm proposing just making that iOS can interface with the new camera and any new hardware. If Apple want's to take advantage of any new features of the camera then they wait until the feature release gets sent out later on. Just focus on getting the new phones out into the wild and working.