Amazing piles o cash... but am I the only one that notices tech sites like this tend to gush an odd amount over Apple's earnings? Could it be that for the past 5+ years their earning are fare more interesting than their products?
If you say you find it interesting I cant disagree, but they definitely aren't the worlds largest company. Not even remotely close to it. They aren't even close to being the largest tech company. Most profitable yes, but not large at all. They make toys.
"Largest company by market cap" is a pretty standard term, try Googling it. Market cap determines the value of a business (number of shares * share price) which makes Apple far and away the most valuable (or "largest") business on the planet.
"Largest company by market cap" was not the term used, but okeedokee, however you want to slice it... Anyhow my point above is that I find it odd on tech sites that financial reports alone are a news item.
Reporting on the leanest and Tech company with the best ROI?
Should they be speaking about Larger companies that despite their size haven't achieved as much? If we believe in market forces and the power of money Apple has to be covered, then maybe you should also wonder how a smaller firm, with less investments seems to be able to outperform others? Again, lean and performant.
I'll give you a reason to follow it... When such big pockets pursue a technology, or abandon it their influence can be decisive.
Let's say that tomorrow Apple invest that cash to buy and keep for themselves a memory chip company. You will still have an SSD to buy, unfortunately the company developing that part will have billions of dollars less to invest and research the next steps, Apple keeping whatever advances they would be making (by financing them) for themselves.
Chances are this is going to happen for memory, mobile GPU etc.
"Should they be speaking about Larger companies that despite their size haven't achieved as much? " They should be speaking about products. Or tech advances, or even in the terms of your post above, that memory chip or SSD that may come. Actual tech.
If you bothered to look at the actual Apple numbers you would see that there IS interesting information there.
For example look at the size of Services. That is HUGE! Put that in the context of an environment that insists that "people won't pay for anything digital, so we have to advertise". Apparently this claim (like so much else in the digital world) is just BS --- people are happy to pay for digital services (whether they're content-like services or curation-like services) WHEN they believe that the services are well-managed, easy to use, and provide good value. You would have thought people would have learned this from the iPod experience almost 20 years ago (same thing "people won't pay for digital music when they can download it") but people don't want to learn --- they'd rather bitch that "the cost of iCloud is too expensive compared to Dropbox | OneDrive | Box | whatever" than investigate whether people who're actually PAYING for iCloud consider it worth paying for.
Likewise look at the size of Other. Just seeing these numbers as percentages does not give you a sense of scale. Just the Apple Watch business is big enough to be a Fortune 500 company. Put that in the context of people who insisted that Apple Watch was (and is) "a failure". And of course we are seeing the same thing now with AirPods, the other, rapidly growing, part of Other. Again the usual crowd of no-nothings insisting that they were a failure. Meanwhile, in the real world, phenomenal popularity, and STILL SOLD OUT! Today there is STILL a six-week lag time between order and delivery --- Apple literally cannot make them fast enough.
The basic problem for people like you is that Apple operates like Gauss, with the motto "few but ripe". They don't ship quarterly (or even annual) trivial updates of products, and so they don't generate a stream of the minimum publishable fragment of news. They update products when they believe they've accumulated enough new "value" to justify a new product.
This can be frustrating, especially if you're now in the market for an iPad or aWatch or whatever and want to buy "the new one", but overall it probably generates a lot more value for their customers. Money is not spent on trivial redesigns that represent just a few percent improvement over the old thing, rather by making each redesign substantial, and amortizing the costs of the redesign over a huge number of units, prices can be kept lower. (And yeah, Apple tax, we've heard it all, but turns out that whenever you compare like with like, that tax doesn't really exist. People can't find AirPod replacements, or aWatch equivalents, or flagship smartphones that offer Apple level hardware at substantially cheaper prices. Whenever you look at the details, that cheaper hardware comes at a loss of something.)
I don't disagree with your logic but, your assertion that each yearly iteration of product is a substantial improvement over the previous is pretty far out there. Anyhow, as for the topic at hand, it's Anandtech's site. They can post a detailed report on the history of eggplants and their effect on human gastro intestinal health over the centuries if they want to... I just find it odd how non-tech related it is. It used to be about products and technology in general. Now its about profit. Its obvious why companies are concerned with profits, but tech sites? /shrug.
The only Apple product that (so far) has a more or less guaranteed annual update is the iPhone. Everything else has a somewhat flexible schedule.
So tell me which annual iPhone update do you think was not a substantial improvement. (Even bearing in mind that iPhone is on that annual update track because it was the one product where Apple couldn't unilaterally set the rules, it was severely constrained by the need to work with the carriers and their enforced two-year contracts.
Much of the carrier's malign influence is thankfully no longer that important, but it is still the case that most phones are bought tied to a fixed-duration carrier plan, which still constrains Apple's flexibility and more or less forces the September updates because a large pool of people reach a particular point in the year where their contract runs out and they're psychologically primed to buy a new phone. In an ideal world, more and more people will move to decent alternatives that are month-to-month contracts, like Ting, but right now Apple has to live in the world that is.
Even so, and bearing in mind that, even more so than with other products, the target buyer is the consumer from TWO years ago, I can think of significant updates with every annual iPhone release.)
If you think the the 6 to 6s or 6s to 7 (or 4,4s,5,5s for that matter) were "significant" then I think you and I have very different definitions of significant. Apple is severely lacking on the features and development of new ones, but whatever. Sounds like you you are in love and can hear no wrong so... Enjoy it.
6S had a CPU 50% faster than the 6, a much faster fingerprint sensor (which makes a HUGE difference in usability, trivial though it may seem to a non-iPhone user), likewise the M9 supports wake-on-raise, another huge (though apparently trivial) usability change.
5S was the transition from 32 to 64 bit which, apart from being important to developers, meant another huge performance leap. 5S, of course, also introduced TouchID.
4S was the transition to dual core. Again a huge, noticeable performance leap.
You seem to suffer from the same delusion as the other Apple haters --- that the only significant change to an iPhone consists of a change in the styling. (Of course these are the same people who sneer that "sheeple" only buy iPhones because of fashion. The patterns seems basically the same as the homophobic politician later caught in a gay scandal --- accuse everyone else aggressively of that which you fear most in yourself.)
We’ve updated our terms. By continuing to use the site and/or by logging into your account, you agree to the Site’s updated Terms of Use and Privacy Policy.
Facebook
Twitter
RSS
18 Comments
Back to Article
osxandwindows - Tuesday, May 2, 2017 - link
What a fail. Wall street told me so.Jokes aside, it is good that they're starting to depend less and less on the iPhone for driving revenue.
I wunder if mac revenue had anything to do with the surface's decline.
goatfajitas - Wednesday, May 3, 2017 - link
Amazing piles o cash... but am I the only one that notices tech sites like this tend to gush an odd amount over Apple's earnings? Could it be that for the past 5+ years their earning are fare more interesting than their products?A5 - Wednesday, May 3, 2017 - link
The earnings of the world's largest company are an interesting thing to analyze, and Apple only does 2-3 product launches a year for them to cover.goatfajitas - Wednesday, May 3, 2017 - link
If you say you find it interesting I cant disagree, but they definitely aren't the worlds largest company. Not even remotely close to it. They aren't even close to being the largest tech company. Most profitable yes, but not large at all. They make toys.A5 - Wednesday, May 3, 2017 - link
You're using a non-standard definition of "largest" then.Their market cap as of yesterday night was $774B, which is more than double Exxon Mobil (who is #7). They're $130B ahead of Alphabet, who is #2.
goatfajitas - Wednesday, May 3, 2017 - link
Pretty sure "large" is a term used to measure size or volume, not profit. Apple isnt large, they are highly profitable.vanilla_gorilla - Wednesday, May 3, 2017 - link
"Largest company by market cap" is a pretty standard term, try Googling it. Market cap determines the value of a business (number of shares * share price) which makes Apple far and away the most valuable (or "largest") business on the planet.goatfajitas - Wednesday, May 3, 2017 - link
"Largest company by market cap" was not the term used, but okeedokee, however you want to slice it... Anyhow my point above is that I find it odd on tech sites that financial reports alone are a news item.Torrijos - Wednesday, May 3, 2017 - link
Reporting on the leanest and Tech company with the best ROI?Should they be speaking about Larger companies that despite their size haven't achieved as much? If we believe in market forces and the power of money Apple has to be covered, then maybe you should also wonder how a smaller firm, with less investments seems to be able to outperform others? Again, lean and performant.
I'll give you a reason to follow it...
When such big pockets pursue a technology, or abandon it their influence can be decisive.
Let's say that tomorrow Apple invest that cash to buy and keep for themselves a memory chip company.
You will still have an SSD to buy, unfortunately the company developing that part will have billions of dollars less to invest and research the next steps, Apple keeping whatever advances they would be making (by financing them) for themselves.
Chances are this is going to happen for memory, mobile GPU etc.
goatfajitas - Wednesday, May 3, 2017 - link
"Should they be speaking about Larger companies that despite their size haven't achieved as much? "They should be speaking about products. Or tech advances, or even in the terms of your post above, that memory chip or SSD that may come. Actual tech.
name99 - Wednesday, May 3, 2017 - link
If you bothered to look at the actual Apple numbers you would see that there IS interesting information there.For example look at the size of Services. That is HUGE! Put that in the context of an environment that insists that "people won't pay for anything digital, so we have to advertise". Apparently this claim (like so much else in the digital world) is just BS --- people are happy to pay for digital services (whether they're content-like services or curation-like services) WHEN they believe that the services are well-managed, easy to use, and provide good value.
You would have thought people would have learned this from the iPod experience almost 20 years ago (same thing "people won't pay for digital music when they can download it") but people don't want to learn --- they'd rather bitch that "the cost of iCloud is too expensive compared to Dropbox | OneDrive | Box | whatever" than investigate whether people who're actually PAYING for iCloud consider it worth paying for.
Likewise look at the size of Other. Just seeing these numbers as percentages does not give you a sense of scale. Just the Apple Watch business is big enough to be a Fortune 500 company. Put that in the context of people who insisted that Apple Watch was (and is) "a failure". And of course we are seeing the same thing now with AirPods, the other, rapidly growing, part of Other. Again the usual crowd of no-nothings insisting that they were a failure. Meanwhile, in the real world, phenomenal popularity, and STILL SOLD OUT! Today there is STILL a six-week lag time between order and delivery --- Apple literally cannot make them fast enough.
The basic problem for people like you is that Apple operates like Gauss, with the motto "few but ripe". They don't ship quarterly (or even annual) trivial updates of products, and so they don't generate a stream of the minimum publishable fragment of news. They update products when they believe they've accumulated enough new "value" to justify a new product.
This can be frustrating, especially if you're now in the market for an iPad or aWatch or whatever and want to buy "the new one", but overall it probably generates a lot more value for their customers. Money is not spent on trivial redesigns that represent just a few percent improvement over the old thing, rather by making each redesign substantial, and amortizing the costs of the redesign over a huge number of units, prices can be kept lower. (And yeah, Apple tax, we've heard it all, but turns out that whenever you compare like with like, that tax doesn't really exist. People can't find AirPod replacements, or aWatch equivalents, or flagship smartphones that offer Apple level hardware at substantially cheaper prices. Whenever you look at the details, that cheaper hardware comes at a loss of something.)
goatfajitas - Wednesday, May 3, 2017 - link
I don't disagree with your logic but, your assertion that each yearly iteration of product is a substantial improvement over the previous is pretty far out there. Anyhow, as for the topic at hand, it's Anandtech's site. They can post a detailed report on the history of eggplants and their effect on human gastro intestinal health over the centuries if they want to... I just find it odd how non-tech related it is. It used to be about products and technology in general. Now its about profit. Its obvious why companies are concerned with profits, but tech sites? /shrug.name99 - Wednesday, May 3, 2017 - link
The only Apple product that (so far) has a more or less guaranteed annual update is the iPhone. Everything else has a somewhat flexible schedule.So tell me which annual iPhone update do you think was not a substantial improvement. (Even bearing in mind that iPhone is on that annual update track because it was the one product where Apple couldn't unilaterally set the rules, it was severely constrained by the need to work with the carriers and their enforced two-year contracts.
Much of the carrier's malign influence is thankfully no longer that important, but it is still the case that most phones are bought tied to a fixed-duration carrier plan, which still constrains Apple's flexibility and more or less forces the September updates because a large pool of people reach a particular point in the year where their contract runs out and they're psychologically primed to buy a new phone. In an ideal world, more and more people will move to decent alternatives that are month-to-month contracts, like Ting, but right now Apple has to live in the world that is.
Even so, and bearing in mind that, even more so than with other products, the target buyer is the consumer from TWO years ago, I can think of significant updates with every annual iPhone release.)
goatfajitas - Wednesday, May 3, 2017 - link
If you think the the 6 to 6s or 6s to 7 (or 4,4s,5,5s for that matter) were "significant" then I think you and I have very different definitions of significant. Apple is severely lacking on the features and development of new ones, but whatever. Sounds like you you are in love and can hear no wrong so... Enjoy it.name99 - Wednesday, May 3, 2017 - link
6S had a CPU 50% faster than the 6, a much faster fingerprint sensor (which makes a HUGE difference in usability, trivial though it may seem to a non-iPhone user), likewise the M9 supports wake-on-raise, another huge (though apparently trivial) usability change.5S was the transition from 32 to 64 bit which, apart from being important to developers, meant another huge performance leap. 5S, of course, also introduced TouchID.
4S was the transition to dual core. Again a huge, noticeable performance leap.
You seem to suffer from the same delusion as the other Apple haters --- that the only significant change to an iPhone consists of a change in the styling. (Of course these are the same people who sneer that "sheeple" only buy iPhones because of fashion. The patterns seems basically the same as the homophobic politician later caught in a gay scandal --- accuse everyone else aggressively of that which you fear most in yourself.)
goatfajitas - Thursday, May 4, 2017 - link
Like I said. It sounds like you you are in love and can hear no wrong so... Enjoy it.Kvaern1 - Wednesday, May 3, 2017 - link
They also report Intel, AMD, NVidia and MS earnings every quarter, and they've done it for a long time.Newsjunkie58 - Wednesday, May 3, 2017 - link
Apple's service revenue will be the most interesting number in the recent quarter. It's up 18% yoy. https://alphastreet.com/b4f24949