With a rhythmic metronome regularity
through the stock market, Apple's results are anticipated, communicated and analyzed
each quarter. Those for the first quarter of 2014 fell last night. They
were followed by a conference and questions/answers, some by Tim
Cook.
Here are the main lessons from a quarter marked byof the
iPhone sales better than expected, byiPad purchases
down year on yearand by turnover figures and
profits which continue to make one dizzy.
Figures but also and above all comments to be found in the rest of this
article :
The (big) numbers
We are not going to dwell on the always astronomical figures thrown up by
Apple. But a few are worth remembering and demonstrate continued good health
of society.
- The turnover for the quarter was45.6 billion
dollarspour10.2 billion in profits(!) what is
above Apple's (often conservative) forecasts and also better
than the same quarter last year ($43.6 billion and net profit of 9.5
billions of dollars)
- Themargeraw material is also progressing from
39.3% last year to no less than37,5 %, a huge number
in this industry, probably linked to sales of the high-end iPhone
5s.
- 150.6 billion dollars: this is the quantity of cash accumulated
until now by Apple. An idea by the way…: hire people to go
even faster on innovation and surprise us?
This quarter surprises when it comes to iPhone sales. They are
better than expected. These are like this43,7 millions
d’iPhonewhich found a buyer, a success which finds its origins in
part in Asian countries. Tim Cook notably mentioned a market share of
50% for its smartphone in Japan or sales growth of 13% in
Chine !
Incidentally, Apple indicates that: 62% of iPhone 4s buyers and 60%
of iPhone 5c buyerscome from Android.
On the other hand, and this was anticipated,
we talked about it here on VIPad.fr, iPad sales arefalling
from one year to the next. While the consensus was moving towards
sales of 19.5 million units, a drop of only 0.7%,
Ultimately, "only" 16.4 million iPads found a buyer this year.
quarter.
Tim Cook nevertheless painted a very positive landscape for sales of
tablets coming to Apple, working to show the importance of this market
in response to questions about a possible peak that would have been reached. For
him, the tablet market will overtake that of computers in the years
to come and Apple will be a major player to benefit from it.
As for the particular figures for this quarter, they would be
in fact to be read differently according to Apple's financial director: in
due to large stocks of iPad mini at distributors, inherited from
previous quarter, it would rather be 17.5 million units sold to remember
against 18 million last year, a drop of 3% and not 13%
as the raw numbers indicate.
Putting sales and cycles into perspective for the iPhone, iPad and
l'iPod:
iTunes and the App Store
Apple shared figures that show the success of its virtual store
applications, media and eBooks.
Thus, over the quarter,$5.2 billion was spent
on iTuneseither agrowth of 24%compared to the
same period last year and even better than the 4.7 billion dollars of
last quarter of 2014.
On the application side, there are no less than 70 billion
total downloads since the inception of the App Store.
Finally, Apple has a capital of no less than800 million accounts
iTunesfor the most part with an associated credit card number, a
windfall if the company decided to launchin electronic payment
based on iPhone as mentioned here
Acquisitions
Tim Cook reported that Apple had acquired a total of24 companies
during the last 18 months.
Apple never communicates on these acquisitions and if some are all
even known (SnappyLabs,PrimeSense seen
To beor
Burstly the TestFlight editor), the majority is not. Of the
recent acquisitions in 2014 were made and R&D as well as this
type of repurchases remain a priority for Apple.
New products
While Apple had (almost) promised a flood of new products in
2014, Tim Cook asked about the absence of new products at the start of the year is
remained on a now well-known Apple position: it is better to arrive
a little late with a high quality product than being the first with one
average product.
Tim Cook recalled on this occasion that Apple had notneither launched the
first mp3 player, canfirst smartphone or the first
touchscreen tablet, this did not prevent it from dominating these markets with
products which actually brought real innovations but with
a specific attention to detail.
We cannot help but think of the probable arrival of aiWatch connected watch, an area in which Apple has been
outstripped by Samsung with an incomplete product which has not really moved
the crowds,the gear vue
here last year
Two specific quotes on the subject:
- "We care about every detail and it takes us a bit longer to do that.
That’s always been the case": we care about every detail
and it takes us a little longer, it always has.
- "It means more to us to get it right than to be first." : il
is more important for us to offer the right product than to be the
premier
We just want to check it out!
i-nfo.fr - Official iPhon.fr app
By : Keleops AG
founder of the site. Computer engineer and Internet specialist where he has held various positions of responsibility, Laurent has been passionate about mobility since the arrival of "PDAs" in the 90s. Journalist for 4 years for the magazine Team Palmtops (Posse Presse) and author of several books on the iPad published by Pearson.
