It’s getting a little bit predictable, but Apple has reported yet another stellar set of quarterly financial results. The company has sold more Macs and iPhones than the same quarter last year, but sales of the iPod were down compared to the same quarter last year. Profits and gross-margins were also up.
The results for the fourth quarter of the 2009 fiscal year are once again very good. Revenue rose from USD 7.9 billion in Q4 2008 to USD 9.87 billion in Q4 of 2009. Net quarterly profit rose from USD 1.14 billion to USD 1.67 billion. Gross margins were 36.6%, whereas in the year-ago quarter it was 34.7%.
Sales of Macintosh computers were up massively over the same quarter last year; they rose 17% to 3.05 million machines, half of which were sold to switchers. The gains were made in the portable department, which saw an increase of 35% in sales, whereas the desktop segment saw a 16% decline.
The company also sold 7.4 million iPhones this quarter, a 7% increase in unit sales. Sales in the iPod division were down 8% to 10.2 million units – of note is that sales of the iPod Touch were up 100% (!) year-over-year.
“We are thrilled to have sold more Macs and iPhones than in any previous quarter,” said Steve Jobs, “We’ve got a very strong lineup for the holiday season and some really great new products in the pipeline for 2010.”
A conference call is currently under way, and during that call, a few interesting tidbits came out. The mp3 market is dominated by Apple; it owns 70% of the US mp3 player market. iTunes is now the largest online music retailer, probably also in the United States.
All in all, Apple is doing very, very well. The entire industry is seeing increases in sales, but because of Apple’s fat margins, they profit a whole lot more from them.
Unbelievably impressive performance on all fronts. The fact that Mac sales are up so much (during a recession etc) just shows that all the carping about over priced Apple kit is completely misjudged. People seem to really, really want Apple kit and are willing to pay for it.
I am hopeful, in fact I strongly expect, Apple to move ahead briskly on the innovation front in the coming year when we can expect to see the emergence of products using new chip technology arising from Apple’s purchase of PA Semi (the chip design company) last year. Apple doesn’t buy many companies and when they do its usually for very strategic reasons. Its competitors are still trying to catch up with the iPhone but Apple is already moving beyond that. As Steve Jobs said – “Apple tries to skate to where the puck is going to be not where it is”.
I am just glad I put so much of my retirement fund into Apple shares quite some time ago.
Edited 2009-10-19 22:02 UTC
In a single company? That doesn’t seem very wise – especially not with your retirement fund. I mean, all it takes is another Amelio and Apple’s back at square one.
Be proactive with that stock. Like every other company, it’s going to burn one of these years.
No – I have a spread – But I have a chunk in Apple and am already retired on one pension and just waiting to cash in another.
Sculley, Spindler et al. were the problem, not Amelio. Amelio was trying to put things back to where they should have been, as he had done at National Semiconductor.
Noticing the market captilisation of Apple, it’s interesting that it’s once again worth more than IBM and Apple have no million dollar products to sell.
By the way, iPod touch isn’t written iPod Touch. I’m sure you’re aware of the significance of character case.
Remember back when Sun was considering buying the “beleaguered” Apple?
Interesting how positions on both companies changed.
Remember when Michael Dell suggested that Apple return all the shareholders’ money and close the doors?
“By the way, iPod touch isn’t written iPod Touch. I’m sure you’re aware of the significance of character case.
”
argh…case sensitivity grumble grumble
“The fact that Mac sales are up so much (during a recession etc) just shows that all the carping about over priced Apple kit is completely misjudged. People seem to really, really want Apple kit and are willing to pay for it.”
Worth mentioning is that this is not a case of people wanting Apple gear so much that Apple can inflate their prices beyond what the rest of the industry is charging. I know that’s the mantra amongst the editorial staff and most readers of this site but that is misleading as it negates the fact that a PC with the same gear comprised of equal hardware and equal Windows OS is typically the same price. The fact that Apple ads some great software is just icing on the cake and tips the scales in Apple’s favor if you have to purchase equivalent apps on Windows to match things up.
The price disparity comes about because Apple doesn’t allow you the same flexibility to purchase the exact gear with less or different components and therefore pay less. That’s why when people show PCs costing less, its always with a PC that is equipped with less or equipped differently.
Apple gear, is quality gear, styled very well at highly competitive industry standard prices. They give you a bunch of extra software but they give you few options to choose from.
Apple’s “fat” margins come about by forcing you to buy from a limited high-end selection. It’s not that Apple’s margins are any higher than the rest of the industry. PC manufacturers would get the same margins if they didn’t allow their customers the options to buy lower end gear which coincidentally has lower margins. Apple simply doesn’t sell low end, low margins gear.
I’m sorry but this is rubbish when I can buy a seagate 1.5tb hdd for $159 (LESS for Western Digital (rock bottom for Hitachi) both are SATA 2.0 7200 RPM drives) in Australia, and Apple want to charge $200 to “upgrade” from 640GB to 1TB. Not even offering a 1.5TB option. Apple gouge their customers on price. Hell their store lists $600 as the price to get a second hard disk into a powermac tower! $600!!! I could buy 4 1.5TB hdds for that much! Even if apple are selling the longer life media drives (remember these are desktop drives not server scsi units.) they are still a ripoff and I can get 3 of them for $600.
Edited 2009-10-20 01:17 UTC
“I’m sorry but this is rubbish when I can buy a seagate 1.5tb hdd for $159 (LESS for Western Digital (rock bottom for Hitachi) both are SATA 2.0 7200 RPM drives) in Australia, and Apple want to charge $200 to “upgrade” from 640GB to 1TB.”
And why do you need Apple to upgrade your hard drive?
“Not even offering a 1.5TB option. Apple gouge their customers on price.”
I’ll agree with you on some of the upgrades like ram and hard drive. Neither of these void the warranty to do it yourself so why would you not.
Apple’s gear is indeed priced competitively. Their upgrade services are not.
Because he might have an iMac/Mac Mini/Apple TV/MacBook Pro/Time Machine… Plenty of models of those series do not have user access to hard disks.
Edited 2009-10-20 02:41 UTC
Oh come on, the Mac Mini isn’t that hard to open up and get to the hard drive. The ram is a bit trickier, but still easy enough if you have even the slightest knowledge of computer internals. The macbooks, as well as the iMac, are dead easy. Some older Pro models and iBooks were not as simple, but even in those the ram at least was a quick upgrade. I don’t have a time capsule, but in all seriousness, you know how big the time capsule is when you get it and if you want something bigger or more flexible your best bet is to run your own backup server over AFP or get an airport extreme and connect a USB drive of your choosing to that.
Every OEM gouges for ram and hard drive upgrades, it’s as simple as that. It’s always going to be cheaper to do that yourself.
iMac easy!!! Yeah, were did I put those suction cups… http://www.ifixit.com/Teardown/iMac-20-Inch/658/1
“iMac/Mac Mini/Apple TV/MacBook Pro/Time Machine… Plenty of models of those series do not have user access to hard disks. ”
All those models have user-access to hard disks.
Er, no they do not, unless you want to void your warranty right away.
Worth mentioning is that this is not a case of people wanting Apple gear so much that Apple can inflate their prices beyond what the rest of the industry is charging. I know that’s the mantra amongst the editorial staff and most readers of this site but that is misleading as it negates the fact that a PC with the same gear comprised of equal hardware and equal Windows OS is typically the same price.
Not the point. The point is, you take the typical Windows PC or a range of them, then find what the Mac equivalent would sell for, and its more expensive, partly, but only partly, because of the limited range.
Mac people always say, it would have cost me the same or more to buy this machine from Dell or as a white box. But you would never have bought this machine as a white box or a Dell, you’d have bought something closer to what you actually need.
The trick is, to do cult marketing, and use that to sell people something different from and usually more expensive than they really need for the job, in order to raise margins.
It is truly amazing how people reason that Macs are not more expensive than PCs by taking the Mac configuration as the starting point. Cupertino marketing must be proud.
Here in Europe, if you compare OEM prices with Apple ones, you might end up paying around 800€ more for the Apple hardware.
It is true that their build quality and service is better than most PC OEMs, but most people don’t give a damn about it.
For example, consider this Sony Vaio, HD ready with 1 GB graphics card and blue ray reader/writer for around 1600€.
http://www.sony.de/product/vn-fw-series/vgn-fw41zj-h
Now check which Mac Book Pro you might get for that price and which hardware it brings.
http://store.apple.com/de/browse/home/shop_mac/family/macbook_pro?m…
Sure you will get more battery with the Mac and the MacOS X.
For many europeans the “power” of the hardware we can get is more important than the OEM service, because in the end we always have a computer friend to sort out problems.
Sure, if you leave out the rather questionable build quality of Sony machines, the crapware one has to remove (Sony is particularly bad with crapware) and some of the worst tech support around. I won’t claim Apple hardware doesn’t have issues, it does as can all hardware. The user experience as well as the tech support experience is certainly better than Sony though. It’s a gamble you take with anything you buy, sometimes in the end you end up paying more for a cheaper product, and sometimes the higher priced product turns out defective. In other words, price doesn’t mean jack when it comes to quality.
This cuts to the heart of the important question. The question is not “is Apple kit more expensive than equivalent PC kit”. The questions are why does Apple kit, consisting of stuff at the higher price range, sell so unbelievably well at the hight of a recession when so many people are so cash strapped?. Why have Apple products across the board been selling above market trend for so long?
One answer I have seen on many occasions, and your comment is an example of it, is that it is essentially all just a marketing trick. That Apple somehow hypnotises enough people into buying stuff they don’t really want or need and that there are plenty of superior non-Apple alternatives that if only people weren’t hypnotised by the marketing they would be buying instead. My answer to that is that its rubbish.
I think the answer is not marketing (although very clever marketing is a part of the equation) but rather the total experience that people get from using Apple kit. Its to do with the way that Apple kit looks and feels, its to do with the way in which Apple kit is designed and works, its to do with the integration of hardware and software, its to do with the pleasure of the Apple Store retail experience, its to do with all the added value and cleverness of the bundled iLife suit and of the App store. etc etc
The fact of the matter is that lots of techy and non-techy consumers purr with pleasure when exposed to the experience of using Apple kit. It makes them feel good, and clever and creative and safe in a way that Windows/Rim/Nokia/ stuff just doesn’t.
I have lost count of the times that friends (most of whom are not Mac users) have come up to me to gush about their iPhone and how wonderful it is. I lent my neighbour (who is totally inexperienced and fearful of computers) my spare MacBook Pro when her newly purchased and cheap netbook running Visa started to malfunction. She now stops me in the street to gush at me about how much fun she is having using the mac, how she editing photos and movies using the ILife suit, how she feels so good. She looks and is empowered by her use of Apple kit. And its that experience which has powered Apples sensational success in the last decade.
But that’s the very question! We don’t know if this is the optimal price/profit ratio for Apple. For all we know they could drop 200 USD off the iMac and MacBook Pro 13″, and for all we know they might sell 50% more Macs that way – decreasing margins, yes, but massively increasing profits.
That’s kind of the point here. The price/profit ratio for companies like Acer and HP isn’t optimal because even though they all sell 6-8 times as many machines as Apple, they do not profit as much from them. Apple’s price/profit ratio could also not be optimal – it could be that by lowering the price, they could actually increase profits because the loss in margins could be more than made up for because of increased unit sales.
In other words, Apple could actually be underperforming if you take into account that this might simply not be the optimal price/profit ratio.
Edited 2009-10-20 11:47 UTC
well, let’s do the math: let’s say they sell their cheaper imacs and macbooks at an average price of $1000. their margin is 35% = $350 per unit. if they cut the price to $800, their profit per unit drops to $150 USD. if they sell 50% more macs, they now make $225 were they used to make $350 profit. in order to earn more money after cutting the price by 20%, they’d have to sell 134% more macs. that’s not very likely, because even at that pricepoint there are still many cheaper alternatives on the market.
as much as it hurts my wallet, relativly high prices seems to be the right thing to do from apples perspective.
Edited 2009-10-20 12:34 UTC
Well,it really depends how you count these percentages. One could say (to simplify the math here) company A sells 100 items for 1000 doing 350 profit,that is 35000 total.
Now,selling 50% more items will translate to 150 items sold instead of 100.
Selling 150 for 800 with a profit of 35% per piece is 280 profit per piece totaling 42000 profit. I think this is what the original poster wanted to say.
but why should the margin stay the same? if apple lowers the price, it margin will suffer. the oem’s won’t build the machine for less just because apple would like them to do so.
I don’t think that either. I think what people are buying is OSX, and what they are being sold as the price of it, is hardware which is no more integrated than anyone elses, and which is mostly not very well fitted to the users real needs, being mostly rather eccentrically configured systems with too little cooling, too little disk, poor graphics, not a lot of memory, but humongous processors. This is why Hackintoshes are perceived as a threat. They offer just as integrated hardware but in more rational and cost effective configurations. This marketing stance is tied into what I call ‘cult marketing’, as we are about to see.
Yes, the psychological boost which cult membership gives is enormous. But that is what it is. Scientologists feel the same way. The passage is a good illustration of it. It is feelings directed to a particular company and a set of consumer products it makes which would be more appropriate directed to quite other objects, human or spiritual. I am not trying to be unpleasant about it, though this will probably not be very nice to read. But that is what it looks like from outside.
I used to be on the inside too, and I left. So I know what I’m talking about. It looks very different depending where you are standing. And once you are out, you’ll never go back.
Well, to add something. You will still walk down the street feeling good. But it will be because its a nice day, you feel in tune with God, you are in love, you are going sailing, its Christmas, you got a bonus, your child has just hugged you. But it won’t be because of the consumer products you own.
Edited 2009-10-20 12:17 UTC
Not necessarily true. The goal of a company is to maximize profits. Just because the profits are high with prices also being high, it doesn’t necessarily mean that they’ve hit the correct spot on their supply & demand graph to maximize profit. It is unknown if they could increase their profits by decreasing price ( and thus bumping up their sales volumes ). Given the inherent difficulty in getting a profit in this economy to begin with, they probably are happy with the massive profits and won’t try too much experimentation with price to try and increase those profits to the “obscenely massive” level.
“It is unknown if they could increase their profits by decreasing price”
If they’re already highly competitive on price with the biggest major players who’s only real selling point IS price, I don’t see how they can afford to lower their prices much more.
“they probably are happy with the massive profits and won’t try too much experimentation with price to try and increase those profits to the “obscenely massive” level.”
I just don’t see where there is room to lower prices when they’re already so extremely price competitive right now.
Its well known from the pystar case, that Apple is *very* reluctant to disclose their profit margins. Most likely because they’re huge, when compared with their peers.
Also, saying ” I just don’t see” a gazillion times doesn’t really detract from the very basic, generic economics truisms I was talking about. I don’t know, you don’t know, Apple doesn’t know what would happen to their profits with a variation in price.
I’m actually going to go out on a limb here and suggest that Apple might have somebody on staff whose job is to figure out how to make more money. They might even have access to exotic marketing research tools like focus groups and graphs.
You think? I thought the non jobs staff just knitted turtlenecks all day.
Yeah, they probably do their best. I’m just suggesting that its such a black art that the margin for error for any forecast is pretty big. If it wasn’t, companies wouldn’t go bankrupt. Rescissions would never happen. Puppies would never die.
Edited 2009-10-20 14:51 UTC
You mean like this?
They do this every quarter.
No, not like that. More like:
Cost of Macbook 13 inch model akldsfuywj-2: $700
Profit per unit sold : $400
I’m talking per model pricing.
“Its well known from the pystar case, that Apple is *very* reluctant to disclose their profit margins. Most likely because they’re huge, when compared with their peers.”
Higher end hardware has higher margins. If I sell 5 high-end widgets at 30% margin and two medium-end widgets at 20% margin and my competitor sells 20 ultra low-end widgets at 2% margin, 5 medium-end at 20% and 1 high end at 30%, then both companies made the same amount of money but I made higher margins. The difference was that I ONLY sold mid and high end widgets that had high margins. If I sold low-end items, my margin ratio would dramatically decrease but I don’t unlike my competitor. Apple is in the same boat. Apple only sells mid and high-end items thus causing their margins to be high. That by no means implies that they charge more nor does it mean that their margins are higher unless they are capable of negotiating lower rates for parts from their suppliers… which is unlikely because the suppliers offer lower rates to companies that deal in high volume. Apple does not so at best their margins are only equal.
“I don’t know, you don’t know, Apple doesn’t know what would happen to their profits with a variation in price.”
Actually the industry as a whole establishes that proverbial sweet spot because all the major player’s prices are so similar. When one of them reduces their prices slightly and manages to gain share the others follow to compensate.
Obligatory flame: and at the same time the completely free alternative fails the gain traction. 🙂
Their “kit” IS VASTLY overpriced which is why I stopped drinking the koolaid several years ago.
I did this because Apple had made it impossible to strip down their “kit” to the barest essentials which could then be replaced by reasonably priced off-the-shelf components rather than Apple’s 4-5 times markup on the same equipment. (Actually it’s probably more like 8-10 time markup given that there’s no retail markup, plus ther volume pricing discounts from the OEMs OTOH my off-the-shelf stuff was better anyways as it was, generally, retail and tended to come with 3-5y standard warranties v. Apple’s, at the time IIRC, 1y warranty. OEM/non-retail stuff tends to come with 90d-1y warranties, 90d being more common.)
Their notebooks are looking especially bad to me for their pricing given their anemic discrete GPUs v. everyone else at lower price levels with significantly better discrete GPUs + (typically) “better” CPUs. RAM installations and screens tend to be about equal, and casing/build quality does vary but the better generic “PC” vendors are close enough to Apple that it just simply doesn’t matter for what Apple is lacking, and that’s alot right now.
OSX just simply isn’t worth it to me to overpay for Apple “kit”, as much as I like OSX. I’d rather take the $$$ saved and spend it on some additional peripherals that I likely would’ve had to put off or drop altogether had I purchased an Apple product.
About the only time any longer for a “deal” on Apple products is when they do product refreshes, but they are so slow at that and there have been so many recent chipset/CPU changes that it’s not really been a deal since they switched to generic x86 hw, along with all the overpriced peripherals that you’re stuck with for desktops. I still like the Apple desktop cases though, or at least since the powermac G4s with the nice hinged design which was uncommon in generic cases at the time.
Basically about the only time Apple is a good deal is if you are clueless and also intend to purchase the extended Apple Care warranty(2y extra IIRC), however you are still stuck upgrading OSX every year or so and in the Apple world older versions of OSX tended to be left behind very quickly. There’s also the problem of, if you are a gamer, games for Macs still come out well AFTER the Windows release and tend to carry the burden of a premium price(been there done that while I was chugging the koolaid like no tomorrow…)
The commentators here who moan about Apple’s prices or the lack of opportunity to tinker with Apple hardware specifications or write off Apple’s success as being the result of a “cult” are just missing the point. These most recent financial results from Apple show that tens of millions of people look at what Apple is offering, look at the price and say “YES PLEASE!”
Of course Apple could sell more units if it dropped its price but Jobs and the company decided long ago that chasing the wintel crowd downmarket was a poor strategy and looking at the results who is to argue with them. Apple drops its prices when it can produce what it considers to be quality kit with the mark up it has broadly set for the company. It won’t produce cheap crap simply to chase market share and has a premium reputation amongst consumers as a result.
If the decisions of millions of consumers to part with their hard won cash in order to buy what Apple is offering is dismissed as a cult then all I can say is that every other tech company would love to be able to start their own cult but so far none appear to have managed to do so. Shrugging off Apple’s success with a sneer or a laugh (like Balmers did with the iPhone) just makes it even easier for Apple to stay ahead of its competitors.
For a “power user” Apple may not be cost effective. However, the user experience is miles beyond the Windows laptop experience. Miles.
I am definitely a power user. Yet, I love my Mac Powerbook. I did convince work to buy it so it isn’t my own money.
Everything just works in a way a Sony Vaio doesn’t.
And if you’ve ever observed or been asked to help a regular person who knows nothing about computers, you can see the “PC Experience” is a nightmare. They don’t have any idea what is safe to click on in a web browser. They don’t know what applications to install to read a PDF file (I know a woman who paid for the full Adobe PDF authoring suite so she could read PDFs because of some lousy popup window). They have no idea what to do when all the great “software” installed on the computer turns out to be 30-day demos. They never install critical software updates because they have no idea those are any different from the web browser popups they’ve been told to not click on or the ad-ware popups that come pre-installed on the system.
An Apple is so much easier.
Obviously figures can be interpreted many ways but it’s interesting that such significant gains were made in this area after Microsoft’s “more bang for your buck” laptop ads…
You can’t remove all the text from your post.
Edited 2009-10-19 22:49 UTC
Did any of you saw the Nokia results? dissapointing.
The company simply understands consumerism much better than others players in the field. Being worried about the trends in our society Apple’s success makes me think, think hard – as it seems to indicate the rational mind went down the toilet together with wisdom and logic.
I would also be very cautious when using the word worldwide. iPod is in my experience the only “worldwide” product while iPhone had mixed success in, for example, Europe. The same goes for computers. Apple is a non-player in many regional markets.
Edited 2009-10-20 09:28 UTC