Apple Reports First Quarter Results

http://www.apple.com/pr/library/2011/01/18results.html

by aaronbrethorst • 16 years ago

132 98 16 years ago

apple.com

rkudeshi• 16 years ago

Noteworthy: Apple "analyst" Gene Munster predicted 4.3 million iPads sold in 2010. (http://read.bi/cYCppW)

Actual results: 7.33 million just last quarter.

protomyth3• 16 years ago

Mr. Munster gets quite a lot wrong. I am starting to think make a site to solely catalog and score predictions by analysts would be a pretty popular public service.

whakojacko• 16 years ago

please do this.

Samuel_Michon9• 16 years ago

"I am starting to think make a site to solely catalog and score predictions by analysts would be a pretty popular public service."

Philip Elmer DeWitt at Apple 2.0 already has you covered, every quarter he rounds up all the analysts' predictions and after actual results are announced, he writes about the outliers. He also tracks how often the analysts are right/wrong.

Apple Q1 2011 earnings preview: http://tech.fortune.cnn.com/2011/01/18/apple-q1-2011-earning...

YooLi• 16 years ago

14.79 Million iPads sold since the April 2010 release. I think the term 'hotcakes' applies.

evgen• 16 years ago

"Analysts" who go contrarian on Apple are fairly common, and they have spent the past decade being wrong. At this point low-balling Apple has become so common that I think a lot of analysts do this just in case they manage to draw the lucky lottery ticket and "predict" a miss by Apple -- if they are correct their prediction stands out and when they are wrong they just get filed into the long, long list of bad Apple predictions.

ra88it• 16 years ago

If they are correct then their prediction is still just part of the long, long list. Why would it stand out?

tzs• 16 years ago

Why single him out? When iPad was finally shown in January the notion that it would not sell more than a few million, tops, was very widespread among analysts and most of the tech press.

Hell, people were giving Leo Laporte a hard time because he came in with one of the highest estimates, at (I think) over 5 million.

protomyth3• 16 years ago

His name is pretty memorable and he seems to show up quite a lot when people want an "expert" opinion on Apple.

kprobst2• 16 years ago

$6 billion profit on almost $27 billion revenue... that's almost 50% YTD. That's insane. And 62% of that from outside the US.

Say whatever you want about Apple, but they know how to print money.

blantonl2• 16 years ago

they also know how to sit on that money as well... which has quite a few investors pretty antsy.

muhfuhkuh• 16 years ago

I think that, for now, their $130 share gain in the last 52 weeks is more than making up for it.

They can talk dividends when their shares are near Microsoft's level and their product pipeline is less stacked and hype machine is dying.

schammy• 16 years ago

I know! And the amazing thing is just to think about how relevant this is to Hacker News! Because when I think, gee, I wonder what technology Mega Corp is raking in the billions, this it the very first site that comes to mind!

mobl• 16 years ago

They're hitting $1000 share price this year. :-)

kprobst2• 16 years ago

I hope not, that would kill their P/E ratio.

pohl2• 16 years ago

The earnings call started a few minutes ago...

http://www.apple.com/quicktime/qtv/earningsq111/

ergo984• 16 years ago

Apple is simply printing money now. Remarkable financial success.

It is notable that between Q4 2010 and Q1 2011 (the latter includes the holiday season), the growth areas were the iPod [115%] and the iPad [75%]. Macs increased 6%, but actually decreased by 7% in the Americas.

It's hard to hold it as a "bad" result, but among such stellar results the relatively small 15% growth of the iPhone does stand out. Tomorrow the talking heads will probably play that up despite the incredible scale of these results.

ugh13• 16 years ago

How do the holidays come into play if you look at numbers like that? iPods have always spiked tremendously in the holiday quarter and iPads might be similar while the iPhone might be less of a Christmas present. Is there some way to normalize the data?

Samuel_Michon9• 16 years ago

Good question. If you look at Apple's revenue by product line [1], it does appear that iPad is following the same seasonality as iPhone sales. That means that sales spike in FQ1 and the other quarters are roughly similar. It looks like iPad sales in FQ2 will be about 5 million, slightly higher than FQ4-2010 [2].

Even though the iPad is on a refresh pattern two months earlier than iPhone, I don't think it's going to hamper performance for FQ2, especially since enterprise makes up an increasingly large part of sales.

[1] http://images.macworld.com/images/news/graphics/157242-corre...

[2] http://www.apple.com/pr/library/2010/10/18results.html

wiredfool2• 16 years ago

It's really hard to look at quarter to quarter numbers and say that it's good or bad when you have the holiday buying season involved. It's better to look Year on Year (except for the iPad)

There's also different bits of the product lifecycle to consider. Ipods were refreshed in September, (probably in anticipation of the holidays), but they're down year on year. Iphones are nearing the mid point of the yearly cycle, and I'd expect them to be relatively flatish until summertime. (except for that whole verizon thing). Ipads should be mostly flatish, since world + dog expects a refresh in April. The fact that the ios devices aren't flat is saying that there's a huge demand for these things that hasn't been filled yet.

ergo984• 16 years ago

It's better to look Year on Year (except for the iPad)

Sure, but in this case the input in question is the renewed competition courtesy of Android. The natural question everyone will have is how that impacts the iPhone.

For reference, for the same quarter over quarter of 2009, iPhone sales increased 68%.

Iphones are nearing the mid point of the yearly cycle, and I'd expect them to be relatively flatish until summertime

I wouldn't expect this at all. While we might get a sense that everyone is like us, most consumers aren't planning their purchase around Apple's update cycle. They decide they want a smartphone so they go and buy one. We all know that the smartphone market is exploding, and there is a huge untapped reserve of potential customers, so the numbers now are generally big.

Regardless, the iPad and iPod more than make it up. While everone was talking about the 300,000 Android devices activated per day, over this quarter the combined iOS devices hit a simple division rate of almost 360,000 per day. That is amazing.

tsotha2• 16 years ago

>Iphones are nearing the mid point of the yearly cycle, and I'd expect them to be relatively flatish until summertime.

I wouldn't expect that, at least not this year in the US. The iPhone goes non-exclusive here in a week or so as it hits Verizon stores. Most people are expecting a big jump in sales from Verizon customers who wanted iPhones but didn't want to switch to AT&T.

phil• 16 years ago

Q/Q iPhone growth isn't that meaningful because they've been supply constrained. What you're actually seeing in that growth figure is how fast they've been able to grow iPhone production.

archgrove2• 16 years ago

One interesting figure is: 16.24 million iPhones versus 7.33 million iPads + around 10 million iPod Touches. That's around 17 million non-iPhone iOS devices versus around 16 million iPhones, and illustrates why increasing Android sales don't seem to dent iOS sales/usage statistics as much as the phone OS debate might suggest. Most iOS devices being sold are, in fact, not iPhones!

ugh13• 16 years ago

How did you estimate the number of iPod touches?

archgrove2• 16 years ago

From the conference call highlights at macrumors.com:

"Music products: 19.45 million iPods. iPod touch sales grew 27% year-over-year. Now over 50% of iPod sales."

Over 50% of 19.45 million must be around 10 million.

danielrhodes• 16 years ago

Totally. Non-phone iOS devices are the elephant in the room and drive an incredible number of app sales. For example, if you look at the top selling apps in the App Store, they are mostly games that are being downloaded on iPod Touches.

nostromo• 16 years ago

Not sure I follow. How do you know those games are being downloaded on iPods and not iPhones?

shinkansen9• 16 years ago

>　Most iOS devices being sold are, in fact, not iPhones!

Pedantic reply: half ≠ most, half = half

But that aside, I see your point: clearly iOS can still be influential regardless of the shift in the cellphone market space. What will be interesting to see is how (or if) that changes when Verizon gets the iPhone...

ugh13• 16 years ago

Half plus one is most.

ZeroGravitas2• 16 years ago

I don't understand what "Android sales don't seem to dent iOS sales/usage statistics as much as the phone OS debate might suggest" means.

Most stats from various sources and markets over the last year, like sales and installed base, have Android behind but growing (much) faster than iPhone/iOS. So phone sales only exceeded Apple's in the US 2 or 3 quarters ago, and we only had data showing that about 1 quarter ago. Installed base is estimated to be moving above iPhone right about now, iOS (including iPads and Touches) will obviously take longer. Android share of the tablet market (the Galaxy Tab basically) is already at 25% for the last quarter apparently.

So in summary, anyone claiming Android was already ahead of iOS wasn't using any reliable figures, and mostly I've seen this in reverse (i.e. if Android is so far ahead where are all the quality games). Claims that Android looks like the future are (despite being predictions) on much firmer ground given the historical trends in the data.

mikeryan• 16 years ago

Watching the Apple share price graph over the course of 7 days starting with Steve's step down announcement yesterday through the earnings call today is going to be a really interesting exercise on timing bad news.

shinkansen9• 16 years ago

I couldn't help but notice the timing too. Steve steps out just as Apple is about to post phenomenal earnings: smart moves on Apple's part I think.

patrickk2• 16 years ago

If Steve is really sick then it's probably just a coincidence. He's a genius but not god.

Samuel_Michon9• 16 years ago

"Watching the Apple share price graph over the course of 7 days starting with Steve's step down announcement yesterday through the earnings call today is going to be a really interesting exercise on timing bad news."

Word on the street is that Jobs had already shown up less at Apple in the last few weeks, the announcement was obviously timed to coincide with a bank holiday.

But, if Apple's quarterly results turned out lower than Apple's guidance and the Street's expectations, I bet Jobs' sick leave would have been announced at an earlier date, so that the two shocks wouldn't have amplified one another.

(Instead, at today's closing bell Apple's stock was back to the level of a couple days a go. An hour later, when Apple's Q1 results were in, trading actually went up to an unprecedented height. So Apple's cunning plan worked out quite nicely.)

imkevingao• 16 years ago

very good strategic planning. Releases the report right after Steve Jobs steps down, I am pretty positive that Steve Jobs knew this report, thus knowing that it'll be safe to step down with this type of amazing results being reported to the public

zmmmmm2• 16 years ago

16 million iPhones over 90 days is 178,000 / day.

This is getting down to near half Android's claim of 300,000 / day (not all phones, but one would presume nearly all).

Of course, add in the other iOS devices and Apple is back in front, but it's interesting to see how far behind Android they are in the phone market now.

lotusleaf1987• 16 years ago

Really? Android is on every carrier. iPhone at the moment is only on At&t. If the iPhone were on all carriers the way Android is, Android almost certainly wouldn't be so far ahead. Hence... the iPhone is headed to Verizon. Let's follow up in a year and see where things are at then. Also, Android is on dozens of devices at different prices points. There have only been 4 iPhones... it's Apples to Oranges (pun intended). And anyways... Android isn't hurting the iPhone, it's hurting Blackberry: http://www.asymco.com/2011/01/11/for-every-att-android-user-...

zmmmmm2• 16 years ago

I don't disagree with much that you say. There are many explanations for Android's success - some of them are due to characteristics of Android (openness, more power and flexibility, Google branding and services integration, etc), others are due to failures of Apple(carrier exclusivity). These things help explain it but they don't change the facts of it.

You take a similar line about Android - eg: why did Google not support an iPod Touch like devices? We could say, "sure, iOS looks more successful than Android overall but that's just because Google doesn't support non-phone devices yet" - perhaps it explains why Android doesn't have overall more market share yet, but it doesn't change that facts of the situation - in overall marketshare iOS wins hands down.

Samuel_Michon9• 16 years ago

Google claims carriers are activating 300,000 Android devices a day. The Apple figure you mentioned is of actual hardware sales, limited to phones. I'm not sure whether the two figures are comparable.

In any case, sales volume for the entire platform is more interesting to developers, as an iPhone app will also work on iPhone touch and iPad. Combining sales of all iOS devices that allow 3rd party apps, Apple sold 375,000 a day in the last quarter. (33.57m/90)

What I found especially interesting in today's conference call was the figure for iOS' installed base: 160 million. Android has a long way to go.

jonhohle• 16 years ago

That claim was also made during the middle of the holiday season. I'd wager activations have cooled off since then.

Samuel_Michon9• 16 years ago

Right, and the numbers themselves are kind of dubious, too:

On Dec 6, Andy Rubin blogged that there were 200,000 activations a day. On Dec 8, Andy Rubin tweeted there were 300,000 activations a day.

http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2010/12/introducing-nexus-s-w...

http://tech.fortune.cnn.com/2010/12/08/andy-rubin-google-act...

timdellinger• 16 years ago

They obviously knew that this would bump the stock price up, which is why Steve's step-down announcement was timed to effect the market on the same day.

ugh13• 16 years ago

By the way, not one question about the health of Steve Jobs.

ffffruit2• 16 years ago

One would hope that his last sentence regarding his and his family's privacy would be respected.

ffffruit2• 16 years ago

I am happy for them. Apple is a company that puts design and user experience at the front and they get rewarded for it. I see their revenue as generated by genuine consumer appreciation compared to the generic ad revenue that other companies generate.

bane• 16 years ago

Phenomenal. I'm not sure I can put together a comment that's much more than that.

erikstarck• 16 years ago

The value of Apple soon surpasses the GDP of Sweden.

Apple Reports First Quarter Results

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