8 ms·

Apple Reports Third Quarter Results

75 points by orrsella 12y ago

kostyk 12y ago
wow, it's improvement from last year. This engine just keeps running.
jph 12y ago
TLDR: "heavily below expectations" -- Telegraph Live blog commentary: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/apple/10983304/Apple-results-Q3-live.html http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/apple/10983304/Apple-r...
- encoderer 12y ago
  That's not at all true. They beat earnings. It's the forward looking guidance that looks concerning, but it's a faux number because Apple has talked a lot about their product pipeline but the forward guidance doesn't include any new products.
  - DannyBee 12y ago
    It was definitely below street expectations for revenue, and number of units sold. Tim even admits this on the call:"iPad sales met our expectations," Cook says, "but we realise they didn't meet many of yours." So they beat EPS, but they were below estimates on shipping both iphones and ipads. It's only because they increased margins that they beat EPS.
  - smackfu 12y ago
    Heh, on the conference call, someone asked them why they beat their gross margin guidance for the 3rd quarter in a row, when these are supposed to be realistic numbers now.
- ChuckMcM 12y ago
  Hardly, I think most people are responding negatively to the fact that their Q4 projections look exactly like what they did in Q4 of last year (http://www.apple.com/pr/library/2013/10/28Apple-Reports-Fourth-Quarter-Results.html http://www.apple.com/pr/library/2013/10/28Apple-Reports-Four...), so staying flat during the holiday / back-to-school season year over year probably got some people worried that the magic is fading. They did payback nearly 50 cents a share in dividends, so its not all crazy times. Edit: Oh, and that ipad number I missed that the first time, they could really use something magical there.
  - eyesee 12y ago
    Apple's fiscal Q4 is from July - September, not the holiday quarter.
    - ChuckMcM 12y ago
      Nicely splits back to school and end of the year buying between two quarters. Given their back-to-school quarter is going to be flat suggests they have less confidence in their 'send your kid to school with a Mac' campaign. Personally I was all set to get the large form factor iPad but will get a Samsung Note Pro instead.
      - listic 12y ago
        What's convincing you to choose Samsung Note Pro instead of an iPad? Personally, I'm looking at Microsoft Surface Pro 2 instead of any tablet, because it's not just a tablet, but an x86 PC that can run Ubuntu (yes, 2, not 3, because larger size and loss of Wacom digitizer while retaining the same hardware don't look like improvements to me). I even think Apple will present an "iPad Pro" along these lines, this year, with a killer feature of being able to run OS X apps. I don't live in Apple-land and I don't want that, but it should be popular.
        ChuckMcM 12y ago
        The 12" screen and the better digitizing pen. My application is much more notes/sketch focused. I've got several different stylii for the iPad, none of them is as nice as the Note's pen. I like the larger size so that I can see more of the sketch even while zoomed, I don't care about having it in my pocket. The contenders were something like a Yoga 2 pro, the Note pro, or something from Apple. They don't have anything in that space so for that reason, they're out.
        listic 12y ago
        What kind of digitizer is there in Samsung Note Pro? If you are so flexible as to consider Android, iOS and Windows, you should consider Microsoft Surface Pro 3, too. I am really interested to know your opinion; my email is in the profile if you will actually look into it and decide to share. For me, Microsoft tablets are an overseas shipping order away, so I hesitate a lot before buying a completely new piece of hardware.
- Stubb 12y ago
  Clearly Apple is dying.
deleted 12y ago
[deleted]
- smackfu 12y ago
  OTOH: "Since the Nokia acquisition was completed in April, Microsoft sold 5.8 million Lumia phones and 30.3 million non-Lumia phones. "
  - frandroid 12y ago
    Yeah, I don't care about Microsoft's phone sales, I want to see the smartphone sales numbers...
untog 12y ago
The iPad clearly isn't going away, but it isn't taking over computing in the way everyone predicted either. If the rumours of Apple making a larger iPhone come true that could hurt iPad sales even more. Aside from anything else that makes me ponder the wisdom of Microsoft's tablet-heavy focus on Windows 8.
- smackfu 12y ago
  Yeah, it feels like people wanted the iPad to be the next iPhone, to fuel continued growth. But it may just hang out at that 15% of revenue, like the Mac, and it's ups and downs just don't matter that much to the overall picture.
- Someone1234 12y ago
  > If the rumours of Apple making a larger iPhone come true that could hurt iPad sales even more. I don't really see that. I own a Galaxy Note (read: HUGE phone) and yet I still own a tablet. A larger iPhone won't be as large as the Galaxy Note, it just isn't Apple's way, at most it will be similar to the Galaxy S5. To me the iPad has a niche that it covers (e.g. reading books, larger "table" games, etc) and even a large iPhone won't cut into that business much. Even if the iPhone was Galaxy Note sized I'd still buy an iPad, only maybe one single use case would shift and that is a minor one.
  - untog 12y ago
    I'm not sure you/we are typical, though. Do non-tech folks really spend $500 on a device to read books and play table games? If you were into reading, at least, I'd imagine you'd be picking up a considerably cheaper Kindle instead.
    - WaxProlix 12y ago
      I bought a Kindle Paperwhite recently and realized I enjoy reading on my phone almost as much. Made me kind of want a tablet, actually. I remember getting a tablet a while ago with a Pixel Qi screen that essentially doubled as an e-reader... wonder where that technology (and the Qualcomm Mirasol etc) all went.
cmollis 12y ago
Why is apple's tax rate lower than mine?
- Someone1234 12y ago
  They off-shore most of their money (e.g. Ireland) to evade tax. It is legal but scummy.
  - api 12y ago
    Nearly every large corporation does this.
  - forrestthewoods 12y ago
    You mean tax avoidance. Tax evasion is illegal. What Apple does is, as you said, legal.
    - prawn 12y ago
      It's the vibe of the thing, your Honour (to borrow The Castle's way of assessing this sort of thing).
  - thinkling 12y ago
    They don't "off-shore" their money in the sense of an active move out of the U.S. They earn money abroad and leave it abroad rather than pay tax to repatriate it to the US.
  - sbuk 12y ago
    I'm still yet to hear why a US company should pay tax on revenues earned outside the US. This goes for Google and Microsoft too. What has the Federal Government done to earn the tax?
    - Moto7451 12y ago
      A couple reasons come to mind (not all mine, nor do I necessarily agree with them): For one, US citizens are expected to pay taxes on money they earn outside the US, even if they reside outside the country. This, in and of itself, rubs people the wrong way. In some cases, Canada comes to mind, your US taxes are reduced by what you paid to Canada. This isn't the case everywhere. The more people-like corporations become, depending on your politics, the more likely you are to feel like the tax law should treat individuals and corporations similarly. Yes, this ignores a lot of the actual economic realities of corporations, but feelings and politics be damned :). Two, the fact that the corporations in question are housed in the US means that somewhere along the line, there is likely some sort of tax break, credit, loan, law, or incentive program that they've been given to advantage them. After all, what large corporation doesn't have lobbyists and large building projects that can get funding from state and local governments. Some industries get subsidies directly from the government (The oil industry's subsidy being a popular one for political bile). Additionally, like people, corporations benefit from functioning civil services, roads and highways, and the protection of the military. These are all things that cost money (and no, lobbying dollars aren't going to cover that :). Lastly, if you're more socialist leaning you likely wouldn't mind seeing a social safety net of some kind like a universal government stipend. Large corporate profits seem like an ends to a means in terms of executing that. I don't think a majority of US citizens feel like that's a great plan, but I've heard it suggested by some very left leaning thinkers.
plg 12y ago
Ironic that the spreadsheet linked to on the Apple Press Info page (https://www.apple.com/pr/pdf/q3fy14datasum.pdf https://www.apple.com/pr/pdf/q3fy14datasum.pdf) is a pdf created not by iWork/Numbers but by ... ... Excel doh!
- jedberg 12y ago
  Not really. Even Apple will tell you that Excel is the best software to do serious spreadsheet work on a Mac. Numbers is for consumer oriented / home budget applications.
- emersonrsantos 12y ago
  Why it's ironic when a spreadsheet is used to do computation by people who do not understand different software?

75 points by orrsella 12y ago

wow, it's improvement from last year. This engine just keeps running.

jph 12y ago

TLDR: "heavily below expectations" -- Telegraph Live blog commentary: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/apple/10983304/Apple-results-Q3-live.html http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/apple/10983304/Apple-r...

encoderer 12y ago
That's not at all true. They beat earnings. It's the forward looking guidance that looks concerning, but it's a faux number because Apple has talked a lot about their product pipeline but the forward guidance doesn't include any new products.
- DannyBee 12y ago
  It was definitely below street expectations for revenue, and number of units sold. Tim even admits this on the call:"iPad sales met our expectations," Cook says, "but we realise they didn't meet many of yours." So they beat EPS, but they were below estimates on shipping both iphones and ipads. It's only because they increased margins that they beat EPS.
- smackfu 12y ago
  Heh, on the conference call, someone asked them why they beat their gross margin guidance for the 3rd quarter in a row, when these are supposed to be realistic numbers now.
ChuckMcM 12y ago
Hardly, I think most people are responding negatively to the fact that their Q4 projections look exactly like what they did in Q4 of last year (http://www.apple.com/pr/library/2013/10/28Apple-Reports-Fourth-Quarter-Results.html http://www.apple.com/pr/library/2013/10/28Apple-Reports-Four...), so staying flat during the holiday / back-to-school season year over year probably got some people worried that the magic is fading. They did payback nearly 50 cents a share in dividends, so its not all crazy times. Edit: Oh, and that ipad number I missed that the first time, they could really use something magical there.
- eyesee 12y ago
  Apple's fiscal Q4 is from July - September, not the holiday quarter.
  - ChuckMcM 12y ago
    Nicely splits back to school and end of the year buying between two quarters. Given their back-to-school quarter is going to be flat suggests they have less confidence in their 'send your kid to school with a Mac' campaign. Personally I was all set to get the large form factor iPad but will get a Samsung Note Pro instead.
    - listic 12y ago
      What's convincing you to choose Samsung Note Pro instead of an iPad? Personally, I'm looking at Microsoft Surface Pro 2 instead of any tablet, because it's not just a tablet, but an x86 PC that can run Ubuntu (yes, 2, not 3, because larger size and loss of Wacom digitizer while retaining the same hardware don't look like improvements to me). I even think Apple will present an "iPad Pro" along these lines, this year, with a killer feature of being able to run OS X apps. I don't live in Apple-land and I don't want that, but it should be popular.
      - ChuckMcM 12y ago
        The 12" screen and the better digitizing pen. My application is much more notes/sketch focused. I've got several different stylii for the iPad, none of them is as nice as the Note's pen. I like the larger size so that I can see more of the sketch even while zoomed, I don't care about having it in my pocket. The contenders were something like a Yoga 2 pro, the Note pro, or something from Apple. They don't have anything in that space so for that reason, they're out.
        listic 12y ago
        What kind of digitizer is there in Samsung Note Pro? If you are so flexible as to consider Android, iOS and Windows, you should consider Microsoft Surface Pro 3, too. I am really interested to know your opinion; my email is in the profile if you will actually look into it and decide to share. For me, Microsoft tablets are an overseas shipping order away, so I hesitate a lot before buying a completely new piece of hardware.
Stubb 12y ago
Clearly Apple is dying.

deleted 12y ago

[deleted]

smackfu 12y ago
OTOH: "Since the Nokia acquisition was completed in April, Microsoft sold 5.8 million Lumia phones and 30.3 million non-Lumia phones. "
- frandroid 12y ago
  Yeah, I don't care about Microsoft's phone sales, I want to see the smartphone sales numbers...

untog 12y ago

The iPad clearly isn't going away, but it isn't taking over computing in the way everyone predicted either. If the rumours of Apple making a larger iPhone come true that could hurt iPad sales even more. Aside from anything else that makes me ponder the wisdom of Microsoft's tablet-heavy focus on Windows 8.

smackfu 12y ago
Yeah, it feels like people wanted the iPad to be the next iPhone, to fuel continued growth. But it may just hang out at that 15% of revenue, like the Mac, and it's ups and downs just don't matter that much to the overall picture.
Someone1234 12y ago
> If the rumours of Apple making a larger iPhone come true that could hurt iPad sales even more. I don't really see that. I own a Galaxy Note (read: HUGE phone) and yet I still own a tablet. A larger iPhone won't be as large as the Galaxy Note, it just isn't Apple's way, at most it will be similar to the Galaxy S5. To me the iPad has a niche that it covers (e.g. reading books, larger "table" games, etc) and even a large iPhone won't cut into that business much. Even if the iPhone was Galaxy Note sized I'd still buy an iPad, only maybe one single use case would shift and that is a minor one.
- untog 12y ago
  I'm not sure you/we are typical, though. Do non-tech folks really spend $500 on a device to read books and play table games? If you were into reading, at least, I'd imagine you'd be picking up a considerably cheaper Kindle instead.
  - WaxProlix 12y ago
    I bought a Kindle Paperwhite recently and realized I enjoy reading on my phone almost as much. Made me kind of want a tablet, actually. I remember getting a tablet a while ago with a Pixel Qi screen that essentially doubled as an e-reader... wonder where that technology (and the Qualcomm Mirasol etc) all went.

cmollis 12y ago

Why is apple's tax rate lower than mine?

Someone1234 12y ago
They off-shore most of their money (e.g. Ireland) to evade tax. It is legal but scummy.
- api 12y ago
  Nearly every large corporation does this.
- forrestthewoods 12y ago
  You mean tax avoidance. Tax evasion is illegal. What Apple does is, as you said, legal.
  - prawn 12y ago
    It's the vibe of the thing, your Honour (to borrow The Castle's way of assessing this sort of thing).
- thinkling 12y ago
  They don't "off-shore" their money in the sense of an active move out of the U.S. They earn money abroad and leave it abroad rather than pay tax to repatriate it to the US.
- sbuk 12y ago
  I'm still yet to hear why a US company should pay tax on revenues earned outside the US. This goes for Google and Microsoft too. What has the Federal Government done to earn the tax?
  - Moto7451 12y ago
    A couple reasons come to mind (not all mine, nor do I necessarily agree with them): For one, US citizens are expected to pay taxes on money they earn outside the US, even if they reside outside the country. This, in and of itself, rubs people the wrong way. In some cases, Canada comes to mind, your US taxes are reduced by what you paid to Canada. This isn't the case everywhere. The more people-like corporations become, depending on your politics, the more likely you are to feel like the tax law should treat individuals and corporations similarly. Yes, this ignores a lot of the actual economic realities of corporations, but feelings and politics be damned :). Two, the fact that the corporations in question are housed in the US means that somewhere along the line, there is likely some sort of tax break, credit, loan, law, or incentive program that they've been given to advantage them. After all, what large corporation doesn't have lobbyists and large building projects that can get funding from state and local governments. Some industries get subsidies directly from the government (The oil industry's subsidy being a popular one for political bile). Additionally, like people, corporations benefit from functioning civil services, roads and highways, and the protection of the military. These are all things that cost money (and no, lobbying dollars aren't going to cover that :). Lastly, if you're more socialist leaning you likely wouldn't mind seeing a social safety net of some kind like a universal government stipend. Large corporate profits seem like an ends to a means in terms of executing that. I don't think a majority of US citizens feel like that's a great plan, but I've heard it suggested by some very left leaning thinkers.

plg 12y ago

Ironic that the spreadsheet linked to on the Apple Press Info page (https://www.apple.com/pr/pdf/q3fy14datasum.pdf https://www.apple.com/pr/pdf/q3fy14datasum.pdf) is a pdf created not by iWork/Numbers but by ... ... Excel doh!

jedberg 12y ago
Not really. Even Apple will tell you that Excel is the best software to do serious spreadsheet work on a Mac. Numbers is for consumer oriented / home budget applications.
emersonrsantos 12y ago
Why it's ironic when a spreadsheet is used to do computation by people who do not understand different software?