Apple Reports Strongest Ever Quarterly Earnings

Apple Reports Strongest Ever Quarterly Earnings: $13.1 Billion Profit on $57.6 Billion in Revenue in Q1 2014



Apple must be doing something(s) right. No wonder other companies are trying to copy Apple.

 

IIRC, they have a ~25%-30% profit margin on their computers (and I suppose also on their mobile products as well). Wintel OEMs are sitting somewhere between 0%-5% for consumer-class laptops, maybe a little bit higher for business-class.

High profit margins do wonders for your bottom line .

 

Apple is doing everything wrong according to any analyst that you read. Specially if you read after the flack that was the earnings call.

 

If Apple is doing everything wrong , then why are so many companies copying them?

 

you are arguing with the wrong person, I do like apple business model.

my comment was after the earnings call on monday every analyst bombed apple, thats plain and simple.

One thing that caught my attention Jarhead is that the profit margin per unit is getting lower, this is the 2nd quarter in a row that i notice this.

 

Interesting. I know that Apple's getting most of their revenue these days from mobile (phones/tablets/mp3), so maybe the PC business will become more of a side business for them in the future (since they're getting less money from it)?

Or maybe they're trying to get more people to buy their computers by making them cheaper and/or putting better specs in them? Curious to see how that plays out.

 

depends on how you look at things...



as you can see if we account inflation the margin profit went down



as you can see the major is the iPhone. followed by the iPad

macs are still relevant at 11%, however the sales for iPods have dropped almost 50% since the same quarter last year, despite the 1.69% its still an almost billionaire business...

and here is the sales figure

 

I guess I shouldn't be surprised with iPod sales. Kinda sad to see a product line go this way especially after owning various iPods over the last 11 years. Then again, I'm sure the iPhone and iPad are taking some of those sales away. People with an iPhone really have no need to buy an iPod, people with an iPad don't need an iPod touch to consume apps, etc. Even Steve Jobs first described the iPhone's music playback capabilities as being the best iPod experience. From the sound of it, Apple knew that the iPod would eventually be consumed by the iPhone and iPad.

 

color me surprised a 50% reduction in sales is... staggering.

I truly don't want anything bad happening to my nano (not the current one, but the previous one), its my work out buddy companion. and i will have nothing to replace it with

 

Sansa Clip+ and a nice new 32GB micro SD card? my new workout buddy after my shuffle crapped the bed

 

does it play high bit rate songs? well it should sansa makes good players

I thought about the shuffle, but I don't like so much the randomness of it

 

With an iPod shuffle, you can either play the music in order (if you sync a playlist, otherwise I think it's however the music is sorted in iTunes or the order in which it is synced) or at random. There's a little slider on the shuffle that turns it on, the slider locks into two locations: one for normal playback and the other for random playback.

I still have my 3G 4GB iPod shuffle and don't plan on getting rid of it at this point. It's 1/4 the size of a stick of chap stick, lasts 8+ hours on a charge (more then enough for a single exercise session), and it works with all of my headphones that have in-line controls. My main issue with the Sansa Clip+ is that it doesn't work with mpeg-4 AAC (LC) files (which represents 99% of my lossy library) and they don't fit within Apple's in-line control setup so I would have to use the buttons on the actual player to adjust the volume, skip tracks, rewind, etc. I would have to get the Sansa Clip Zip to gain AAC compatibility but even then all of my headphones with in-line remotes wouldn't work and I would be spending $50. At that point I might as well get a 6G 16GB iPod nano for $60 on Craigslist as it will at least work with everything and integrate with iTunes.

 

Wouldn't converting from AAC to something like mp3 not be such a big deal (hypothetically, if you moved to SanDisk)?

Lack of in-line control would be annoying I suppose. I haven't used that in forever ever since getting rid of my Apple-supposed earbuds (sound quality is an absolute joke...) for a decent pair of Sennheisers (without in-line control). Though these days my touch stays firmly attached to a dock I keep on the top of my toilet's tank as it's now nothing more than a glorified shower radio.

 

It would actually be a big deal converting AAC to mp3. I don't want to degrade audio quality further by conducting a series of lossy-to-lossy conversions. My music, as it stands, is at the lowest bitrate that my ears can tolerate. I picked out the setting after going through a series of blind ABX tests. However, I would have to do that all again with the Lame mp3 encoder and I would have to convert, not from my lossy AAC files, but my source Apple Lossless archives. Sure, it isn't that big of a deal and it would only take my MBP about 12 hours but I would lose my ratings, playcounts, and every other similar aspect that my AAC files already have. Additionally, all of my Bluetooth devices have a built-in AAC decoder. The Bluetooth receiver in my car, my Bluetooth mini speaker, and my Bluetooth wireless headphones. They all work digitally with the output of my iPhone/iPad when playing AAC audio. However, when I playback an mp3 audio file, they switch over to standard Bluetooth 2.1+EDR. Again, not the end of the world but I would rather have support of a higher Bluetooth standard when listening to audio.

That and the lack of in-line controls really is a deal breaker for me. My Bose SIE2i headphones, Beats Tour 2.0, Beats Studios wireless (their wired cord), Sol Republic V8, and the V-MODA Crossfade M-100 headphones I have all offer in-line controls. Granted, I only exercise with my Bose SIE2i headphones but sometimes it's nice to just take a leisurely stroll for an hour while using my iPod shuffle.

My biggest complaint against 3rd party mp3 players has always been the lack of in-line remote compatibility and many of them don't work with AAC files. I adopted the mpeg-4 AAC format a while back as it was able to give me perceptual transparency at a lower bitrate than the Lame mp3 encoder. That and it was built right into iTunes which meant easy encoding. I was surprised that MS supported AAC from the get-go with their Zune line and Sony has added AAC support but other companies, like SanDisk, instead chose to focus on FLAC and OGG Vorgis support. At this point, I'm kind of locked into Apple devices but I'm OK with that. I just wish they would come out with one more generation of iPods, across the board, before hanging them up.

 

hummm... so it only plays flac and OGG? its out them. all my music collection is in lossless AAC and I don't want to duplicate the library

I just wish that they make something like the nano 6th gen again, its truly a great device. I actually don't use other portable devices to play music, because that nano offers still better audio quality. and truly the nano has never been a high end music player.

 

I think you mean Apple Lossless since lossless AAC (actually known as mpeg-4 lossless) isn't a widespread accepted standard and can only be encoded and decoded by ~2 programs (iTunes isn't one of them). Of course, that also means that Apple Lossless compatibility would be limited to Apple only devices since that is their proprietary technology and they are not going to license their decoder, or let it be used, by 3rd party hardware vendors.

The Sansa Clip+ works with more than just FLAC and OGG, those just seem to be the "off" formats that it supports in addition to the barrage of usual mp3, WMA, and Audible. Every company seems to focus on an "off" format, something that isn't widespread like mp3 or WMA. Sony, Philips, and others went with AAC while SanDisk seems to be focusing on FLAC and OGG. Their higher end players work with AAC but not the Clip+. It looks like AAC compatibility is something people have wanted out of the Sansa Clip line for a while but SanDisk still hasn't delivered. It's been the main reason why I never purchased one. They've always seemed like nice players even dating back to ~2007 but their lack of AAC compatibility has always baffled me especially since both Sony and MS folded and made their devices work with that format.

 

yep I meant ALAC or mpeg-4 lossless or my little pony (why those things have so many names!), sorry for the confusion

 

thats not a high profit margin (perhaps it might be in their market)

anything above 30% say 40% would be considered above average.

the only reason apple is not making more money is because of damn samsung.

 

Presumably on the basis that if Apple can make a lot of money selling a lot of boxes at a 40% profit margin, they can be copied and sold cheaper but still making a very profitable return.

 

yep. i should of thought of that myself - except for copyright! can't believe sammy gets away with so much.

 

Apple's no better in that regard