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This is mighty impressive. To put things in perspective: Apple's profits ($13 billion) exceeded Google's entire revenue ($10.6 billion). Source: https://twitt

This is mighty impressive. To put things in perspective: Apple's profits ($13 billion) exceeded Google's entire revenue ($10.6 billion). Source: https://twitter.com/#!/fmanjoo/status/161932440737296386 https://twitter.com/#!/fmanjoo/status/161932440737296386 (via gruber)

nextparadigms 15y ago
As a rule of thumb, I think it's a lot easier to make more revenue as hardware company selling products worth hundreds of dollars at a time. Samsung made $37 billion in revenue in Q3 last year, for example, and HP makes about the same, too. The only problem with these companies is that they don't really know how to maximize their profits. They usually compete on price and release many models with increases costs due to complexity, so profits end up being a smaller % of the revenue.
- solutionyogi 15y ago
  You are right in general, but here we are not comparing AAPL's revenue vs GOOG's revenue. AAPL's profit is more than GOOG's revenue. Now that's definitely remarkable.
  - mkr-hn 15y ago
    That's not a surprise. They're in completely different businesses. Google is a display advertising company that occasionally puts out a better display (Chrome, Android). Apple is in the business of finding and extracting value from hardware markets no one else took seriously.
    - molmalo 15y ago
      That's exactly why I don't understand all this fighting. They are each other's perfect complement! Apple has plenty of experience building hardware and OS's. Their core business is to SELL physical or virtual goods (devices, songs, whatever). They don't care that much about the services. For them, services are just a mean to sell something. Something to add value to something they want to sell. e.g.: Introducing iCloud! Use it on your Mac and your iSomething. Google on the other side, is in the business of SHOWING things. They don't care about selling you something. It's more of a problem for them to sell, than it is to just give it to you for 'free'. They are a service company. Mainly, an advertising company. That's why they don't try to sell their phones to everyone (e.g.: nexus one). They just want you to see what they have to show. So, while you are seeing it, they can show you a few ads. They bought Android, so they could accelerate and expand their market of eyes seeing their ads. But they should ally with Apple. Apple wants to sell, Google wants to show you things. Do you want a video for free? Go to YouTube. Do you want to buy music ? Go to Apple Store. There's no sense in keep fighting each other. And of course, there comes Microsoft, with its own search engine, their own store, their own mobile OS... trying to fight both of them. And they are trying hard to resurrect.
      - nkassis 15y ago
        That's not the way I see it. Google realizes that Apple with a strong majority share of the mobile market would be free to ignore Google entirely. They could severely reduce Google's ability to advertise by controlling mobile app ads. Google needs something like Android to ensure some fair play I believe. If mobile is to eclipse desktop usage, they can't be left out. But in any case Apple can keep going as it is. It's cash cow might die someday but by then it will have so much money they would have a century's worth of cash for R&D to find a new niche. One thing bodes well for Google so far, Apple has struggled getting any kind of traction in the Online space. It's early for iCloud but it's still far from the competition.
        molmalo 15y ago
        I wrote something between those lines 10 days ago (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3463957 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3463957), so, I can understand Google's interest on having it's own mobile OS. But that's not a reason for them to start a war that is not on their best interest. Apple wins having Android around, so they can escape of being accused of monopolistic practices (e.g. no other Browser banned from their OS? Remember Microsoft?), Google wins, by having another channel of distribution for their ads. And both of them complement each other nicely.
      - Poiesis 15y ago
        It's about control. Yes, Google historically has more robust services than Apple. Better, though? Apple's corporate DNA has them pushing for more control over their products, and outsourcing to Google doesn't serve this goal. Remember, Apple would rather release a product considered by techies to be lacking in features than to release something with a sub-par experience. Google products tend to be reliable, and their design sense is improving. But their products tend toward functional rather than elegant; more importantly their products are designed to sell ads. This priority tends to be at odds with Apple's goal of selling products that people love to use. At the moment I think it is more likely that Apple learns to do online services well (their missteps notwithstanding) rather than Google suddenly caring about users more than advertisers.
- pbreit 15y ago
  True. But it's a lot harder to make profits in hardware than in software.
MrFoof 15y ago
Apple makes one billion dollars in profit a week. Say that aloud to yourself. It's simply staggering. UPDATE: (@gruber has pointed out to me that it was a 14-week quarter, so only 0.935 billion a week)
- jlogsdon 15y ago
  The only killed me (my ghost invaded the internet).
- rphlx 15y ago
  There are only 7 billion people on Earth. Apple is essentially making $0.14 in profit per human, per week. Of course, it's a much smaller number of very rich humans, probably less than 1 billion, actually buying their products. There is a limit to how long this can continue, before every person on earth, who is so inclined and can afford it, has 1+ of every Apple product that they could ever want. Assuming $300 per user every 2 years - with 50% margin and 1B users - they can only grow income another 44% before the growth (in real terms) is totally done. So introduce new products? Fine, but almost every possible HW function is already in the iPhone4, and they are rapidly running out of things that current technology will enable them to improve. How many people are going to drop another $600 to get 128GB instead of 64GB? Or 1920x1080 on a 3 inch screen? Seems like it'll be time to short pretty soon.
  - olalonde 15y ago
    There's still plenty of opportunity for growth on the software and content distribution side.
    - rphlx 15y ago
      I would bet against that saving the day. iTunes and the app store bring in maybe 5 billion a year? Even at 100%/yr growth, that's not enough to smooth even a minor bump in their HW revenue. It's pocket change.
  - r00fus 15y ago
    There are always horizons to shoot for - the TV, wearable computing (I see Nano's on collegues' wrists everywhere at work, and that is only partly designed for that purpose), home automation, education, military and small business use are all areas where current products (perhaps newer versions) can make huge inroads. And that's leaving aside anything out of the ordinary/expected that Apple might be cooking up in their skunkworks labs.
redthrowaway 15y ago
Anyone know what their cash on hand is? If they aren't going to start paying dividends again, it seems they must be saving up for something major. Any speculation as to what it might be would be just that, but I can't see them leaving that cash laying around.
- booi 15y ago
  about $97B
  - feralchimp 15y ago
    To give that number some scale, consider that in 1985, the annual budget of General Dynamics Electric Boat topped out at $400B.[1] Maybe they're saving up for an actual assault on Big Brother. [1] - http://www.gdeb.com/about/history/centennial/eb-100yrs-7.html http://www.gdeb.com/about/history/centennial/eb-100yrs-7.htm...
    - aheilbut 15y ago
      To be clear, ~$400B was the US defense budget, not that of General Dynamics.
      - feralchimp 15y ago
        Wow, thanks for the correction. Skimming FTL.
    - evilduck 15y ago
      (I formerly worked for GDIT, so this also looked wonky to me) General Dynamics did a little under $32.5 billion in revenue last year, with $2.6 billion in profit. See: http://money.cnn.com/magazines/fortune/fortune500/2011/full_list/ http://money.cnn.com/magazines/fortune/fortune500/2011/full_...
  - redthrowaway 15y ago
    Holy crap. That's enough to buy a controlling share of AT&T, almost all of Verizon, Sony 5 times over, Viacom 3 times over... It's hard to imagine how they could spend that on facilities or R&D, and AAPL's not the kind of company to take a loss on something in order to corner the market like AMZN. I can't imagine what they would spend it on. Actually, speaking of Amazon, Apple could buy them easily, and still have enough money left over for Netflix. Thisw is, of course, idle speculation, but it does serve to highlight just how much they could throw their weight around, if they wanted to.
waterlesscloud 15y ago
More perspective- domestic box office for any given year hovers around $10 billion.
danwolff 15y ago
And both are higher than Goldman Sachs' revenue.
beatle 15y ago
Here's another thing that impresses me. Last quarter DID NOT include sales of the iPhone 4S in China. http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204624204577181450120727394.html?mod=WSJ_hp_LEFTWhatsNewsCollection http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000142405297020462420457718...

nextparadigms 15y ago

As a rule of thumb, I think it's a lot easier to make more revenue as hardware company selling products worth hundreds of dollars at a time. Samsung made $37 billion in revenue in Q3 last year, for example, and HP makes about the same, too. The only problem with these companies is that they don't really know how to maximize their profits. They usually compete on price and release many models with increases costs due to complexity, so profits end up being a smaller % of the revenue.

solutionyogi 15y ago
You are right in general, but here we are not comparing AAPL's revenue vs GOOG's revenue. AAPL's profit is more than GOOG's revenue. Now that's definitely remarkable.
- mkr-hn 15y ago
  That's not a surprise. They're in completely different businesses. Google is a display advertising company that occasionally puts out a better display (Chrome, Android). Apple is in the business of finding and extracting value from hardware markets no one else took seriously.
  - molmalo 15y ago
    That's exactly why I don't understand all this fighting. They are each other's perfect complement! Apple has plenty of experience building hardware and OS's. Their core business is to SELL physical or virtual goods (devices, songs, whatever). They don't care that much about the services. For them, services are just a mean to sell something. Something to add value to something they want to sell. e.g.: Introducing iCloud! Use it on your Mac and your iSomething. Google on the other side, is in the business of SHOWING things. They don't care about selling you something. It's more of a problem for them to sell, than it is to just give it to you for 'free'. They are a service company. Mainly, an advertising company. That's why they don't try to sell their phones to everyone (e.g.: nexus one). They just want you to see what they have to show. So, while you are seeing it, they can show you a few ads. They bought Android, so they could accelerate and expand their market of eyes seeing their ads. But they should ally with Apple. Apple wants to sell, Google wants to show you things. Do you want a video for free? Go to YouTube. Do you want to buy music ? Go to Apple Store. There's no sense in keep fighting each other. And of course, there comes Microsoft, with its own search engine, their own store, their own mobile OS... trying to fight both of them. And they are trying hard to resurrect.
    - nkassis 15y ago
      That's not the way I see it. Google realizes that Apple with a strong majority share of the mobile market would be free to ignore Google entirely. They could severely reduce Google's ability to advertise by controlling mobile app ads. Google needs something like Android to ensure some fair play I believe. If mobile is to eclipse desktop usage, they can't be left out. But in any case Apple can keep going as it is. It's cash cow might die someday but by then it will have so much money they would have a century's worth of cash for R&D to find a new niche. One thing bodes well for Google so far, Apple has struggled getting any kind of traction in the Online space. It's early for iCloud but it's still far from the competition.
      - molmalo 15y ago
        I wrote something between those lines 10 days ago (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3463957 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3463957), so, I can understand Google's interest on having it's own mobile OS. But that's not a reason for them to start a war that is not on their best interest. Apple wins having Android around, so they can escape of being accused of monopolistic practices (e.g. no other Browser banned from their OS? Remember Microsoft?), Google wins, by having another channel of distribution for their ads. And both of them complement each other nicely.
    - Poiesis 15y ago
      It's about control. Yes, Google historically has more robust services than Apple. Better, though? Apple's corporate DNA has them pushing for more control over their products, and outsourcing to Google doesn't serve this goal. Remember, Apple would rather release a product considered by techies to be lacking in features than to release something with a sub-par experience. Google products tend to be reliable, and their design sense is improving. But their products tend toward functional rather than elegant; more importantly their products are designed to sell ads. This priority tends to be at odds with Apple's goal of selling products that people love to use. At the moment I think it is more likely that Apple learns to do online services well (their missteps notwithstanding) rather than Google suddenly caring about users more than advertisers.
pbreit 15y ago
True. But it's a lot harder to make profits in hardware than in software.

MrFoof 15y ago

Apple makes one billion dollars in profit a week. Say that aloud to yourself. It's simply staggering. UPDATE: (@gruber has pointed out to me that it was a 14-week quarter, so only 0.935 billion a week)

jlogsdon 15y ago
The only killed me (my ghost invaded the internet).
rphlx 15y ago
There are only 7 billion people on Earth. Apple is essentially making $0.14 in profit per human, per week. Of course, it's a much smaller number of very rich humans, probably less than 1 billion, actually buying their products. There is a limit to how long this can continue, before every person on earth, who is so inclined and can afford it, has 1+ of every Apple product that they could ever want. Assuming $300 per user every 2 years - with 50% margin and 1B users - they can only grow income another 44% before the growth (in real terms) is totally done. So introduce new products? Fine, but almost every possible HW function is already in the iPhone4, and they are rapidly running out of things that current technology will enable them to improve. How many people are going to drop another $600 to get 128GB instead of 64GB? Or 1920x1080 on a 3 inch screen? Seems like it'll be time to short pretty soon.
- olalonde 15y ago
  There's still plenty of opportunity for growth on the software and content distribution side.
  - rphlx 15y ago
    I would bet against that saving the day. iTunes and the app store bring in maybe 5 billion a year? Even at 100%/yr growth, that's not enough to smooth even a minor bump in their HW revenue. It's pocket change.
- r00fus 15y ago
  There are always horizons to shoot for - the TV, wearable computing (I see Nano's on collegues' wrists everywhere at work, and that is only partly designed for that purpose), home automation, education, military and small business use are all areas where current products (perhaps newer versions) can make huge inroads. And that's leaving aside anything out of the ordinary/expected that Apple might be cooking up in their skunkworks labs.

redthrowaway 15y ago

Anyone know what their cash on hand is? If they aren't going to start paying dividends again, it seems they must be saving up for something major. Any speculation as to what it might be would be just that, but I can't see them leaving that cash laying around.

booi 15y ago
about $97B
- feralchimp 15y ago
  To give that number some scale, consider that in 1985, the annual budget of General Dynamics Electric Boat topped out at $400B.[1] Maybe they're saving up for an actual assault on Big Brother. [1] - http://www.gdeb.com/about/history/centennial/eb-100yrs-7.html http://www.gdeb.com/about/history/centennial/eb-100yrs-7.htm...
  - aheilbut 15y ago
    To be clear, ~$400B was the US defense budget, not that of General Dynamics.
    - feralchimp 15y ago
      Wow, thanks for the correction. Skimming FTL.
  - evilduck 15y ago
    (I formerly worked for GDIT, so this also looked wonky to me) General Dynamics did a little under $32.5 billion in revenue last year, with $2.6 billion in profit. See: http://money.cnn.com/magazines/fortune/fortune500/2011/full_list/ http://money.cnn.com/magazines/fortune/fortune500/2011/full_...
- redthrowaway 15y ago
  Holy crap. That's enough to buy a controlling share of AT&T, almost all of Verizon, Sony 5 times over, Viacom 3 times over... It's hard to imagine how they could spend that on facilities or R&D, and AAPL's not the kind of company to take a loss on something in order to corner the market like AMZN. I can't imagine what they would spend it on. Actually, speaking of Amazon, Apple could buy them easily, and still have enough money left over for Netflix. Thisw is, of course, idle speculation, but it does serve to highlight just how much they could throw their weight around, if they wanted to.

waterlesscloud 15y ago

More perspective- domestic box office for any given year hovers around $10 billion.

danwolff 15y ago

And both are higher than Goldman Sachs' revenue.

beatle 15y ago

Here's another thing that impresses me. Last quarter DID NOT include sales of the iPhone 4S in China. http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204624204577181450120727394.html?mod=WSJ_hp_LEFTWhatsNewsCollection http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000142405297020462420457718...