Apple has presented its financial results for the first quarter of 2009 (which is the second quarter of the fiscal year 2009 for Apple), and despite suspicions that Apple might see a sharp decline in Macintosh sales in face of the economic slowdown, the company has managed to weather the storm quite well.
Despite the fact that Macintosh sales have seen their first year-over-year decline in a long time, the decline was only 3%, which is significantly better than the 6.5% decline in the overall PC market. Sales of iPods saw a 3% year-over-year rise, and the iPhone saw a massive 123% increase in year-over-year sales, and was down only 15% from the usually very rosy holiday quarter.
As a consequence, the company also did very well money-wise. “Revenue came in at $8.16 billion, which netted the company a profit of $1.33 per share. The holiday quarter had only seen revenue of $2 billion more, driving profits of $1.78 a share, while the quarter one year earlier had seen $7.51 billion in revenue and a profit of $1.16 a share. So the quarterly drop wasn’t especially large, and the company maintained its yearly growth.” The company maintained its revenue growth by increasing its gross margins by 3% to 36.4%.
We can conclude from this that Apple is weathering the storm quite well, despite worries that the lack of cheaper models could negatively affect the company during these economic harsher times.
“I’ll buy anything that’s shiny and made by Apple”
Apple is MUCH more than the manufacturer of Macintosh computers. While the computer business will decline in poor economic times because even a cheap model is a bigger ticket item for most people, the sale of iPods and iPhones and the associated Music, Movies and iPhone apps will continue to rise. The fact that the netbook market didn’t meet sales expectations also suggests that maybe Apple is right in not dedicating too many (if any) resources to this market at the moment too.
No surprise, or worries, here at all really…
Wow, wow, easy there. Not meeting sales expectations doesn’t mean that market is a waste of time.
Let me say I invent a completely new type of dildo: instant pleasure for her in 5 seconds. In the first quarter, I sell 2 million of them. Second quarter, 4 million. Third quarter, 8 million. My own projections indicate I’ll sell 16 million in the fourth quarter.
Instead, I do not meet sales expectations and sell only 15 million that quarter.
Does that mean I should abandon the market, and get all doomy gloomy? Of course it doesn’t. I’m still selling massive amounts of dildos!
On top of that, it was just a report – not an official statement from the manufacturers.
Edited 2009-04-23 06:47 UTC
Don’t tell me: The dildos are little replicas of you?
Dildos, really? That’s the analogy you voluntarily chose? Still makes a nice change from cars I suppose
Yeah… May not have been the most… Fancy choice, but hey, it does the job.
Buying a car doesn’t bring the same pleasure.
Well, not quite. Or at least you are not quite countering mrhasbean’s argument, which it seems bears repeating:
A simplified example of why that would be goes someting like this:
Two quarters ago the whole dildo market was 10 million dildos. Last quarter it grew to 20 million dildos. Someone (may be an industry group, an analyst, one of the companies making dildos, etc.) projected that this quarter the market will grow to 40 million dildos. Based on that projection you are trying to make a decision whether you want to go into the dildo market. You figure that the cost for developing, manufacturing and marketing a new dildo model will be recuperated if you manage to sell 2 million dildos in your first quarter on the market. That is 10% of the projected growth and 5% of the total sales for the quarter. You know that the established dildo manufacturers can grow only so much and there aren’t that many other companies that can enter the market and grab significant share of it. If the projected growth materializes you figure your competitors will be able to corner 17-18 million dildos worth of marketshare and that means you’ll easily be able to reach your goal of 2 million dildos. Now, at the end of this quarter it turns out the market grew to just 38 million – a good number, but not so good for you, because on one hand you may not have been able to sell 2 million dildos, as you had to, and on the other hand even if you did do it, you had to spend more effort and money to do so.
The bottom line being – you may have been better off, financially speaking, sticking to your already established blowup doll and rubber vagina businesses instead of spending money, then spending some more money, and then having to spend even more money in spearheading this new market and now not (or barely) being able to cover what you’ve spent. Which is what mrhasbeen said, except for the marital aids of course.
Blow-up dolls are so 80’s. These days, every pimped-faced teenager wants his own RealDoll – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RealDoll
I wonder what would be the potential market for these dolls if the prices were affordable. By the way, I like that we’re taking measures to replace car analogies in this site with dildos. +1.
Dildo’s are banned in my county, what to do now.
If you read the article you would find that only the Mac business is doing well. Ipod revenue has halved and the iphone revenue is down over 20%.
iPod sales are very seasonal, and were completely expected to halve after the holiday season. Just take a look at the pattern in the previous years:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IPod#Sales
That’s why most analists look at the growth compared to the same quarter in the previous year, rather than compared to the previous quarter.
iPhone sales are also likely to be seasonal, but there isn’t much of a history yet to determine a trend:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iphone#History_and_availability
Edited 2009-04-23 14:06 UTC
An Apple a day keeps economic storms away!
Before the armchair CEOs flood this thread with demands that Apple open source their OS, release a netbook, allow clones, save the dolphins, etc. Keep in mind that Apple have a business model with a proven track record. In fact, it is a business model that’s caused their profits to grow in what is considered by many to be the worst recession in history.
Why fix what isn’t broken?
Because I want an Apple midi-tower, and for them to licence OS X for PC, dammit – and I’m not going to listen to reason
Who cares about Apple profits? Not me. I want what I want and their bottom line is not going to fill any of my pockets, but to empty them instead. Their business model is right for their share holders (who are a bunch of vampire parasites) and wrong for the rest of the planet. Sun is more successful than Apple as it helps more people better than Apple. Their share holders may loose money but who seriously care? they are still alive.
The inherent vice of capitalism is the unequal sharing of blessings; the inherent virtue of socialism is the equal sharing of miseries. — Winston Churchill
The Apple shareholders can keep their blessings and you can keep your misery. I want none of it.
First, why are Apple’s shareholders “vampire parasites”? And second, you don’t seem to realize that all of the business decisions Apple make are ultimately based on the sole reason for the existence of any and every company – to make more money for their investors. And as evangs pointed out Apple are doing a great job fulfilling that goal. Apple don’t give a flying f–k what every schmuck on teh intertubes wants, needs, or thinks they need. If you haven’t found a Mac that fits your needs you’re either a niche customer, a low-margin-end customer, or just someone who’ll irrationally never be content any Mac and they don’t don’t care about you, because you won’t help them make more money. Apple make products that make majority of people happy, slap a mid to high tier price tag on it and then they milk it through return business.
And please lets not get Sun involved. Lets not speak ill of the dead.
You don’t seem to realize that I don’t give a flying f–k what Apple wants, needs, or thinks they need. I just don’t understand why you feel the need to defend their business plan and explain how it makes their investors happy. I don’t really care.
I believe you read my ealier post wrong. I was commenting on evangs’ post. I was just saying that no matter how their business plan work for them, I can still criticize it based on the fact that it is bad for the world. And what is wrong with that? You think that because they win much money they must do it right or you think that because they don’t care about us we should not criticize?
Edited 2009-04-23 11:32 UTC
I’m not necessarily defending Apple’s “business plan”. The point I were trying to make is that you don’t have much grounds to criticize the way Apple are doing business, because not only are they achieving their sole goal that way, but also in doing so they make products and services, with which people seem to be greatly satisfied.
Bad for the world? Really? Are Apple clubbing seals now to make those iPods? Don’t you think that you’re going a lot overboard with this statement? In fact I think that Apple’s existence is overall good for the world – you have one more kind of operating system, one more brand of computers, portable music players and smart phones, and one more music store to choose from. You don’t have to choose them, but you can. And isn’t “competition is good for customers” what everybody is chanting these days.
I think that Apple have shown that they know to do business and they have both the profits and the customer satisfaction to prove it. No company cares about *everyone* so criticizing any particular one for that is both pointless and retarded.
This is getting confused. I believe we agree but we talk past each other and we don’t listen. I agree with almost everything you said, but I still think that no matter how their business plan work for them, I can still criticize, ask for more openess and demmand a netbook as a customer. Whether they listen or not and whether it is good for them or not does not matter, since I am not them. If I want it, I can demmand it and if I don’t like it I can criticize it. Their bottom line does not make them right and does not mean they are beyond criticism.
Honey, you can demand all you want.
Just whether Apple would listen have nothing to do with them being “Good” or “Bad”.
I demanded MS to release a capable but not monopolistic Web Browser for years, And Redmond wouldn’t listen.
So finally I move on, MSFT is dead to me.
I suggest you do the same with AAPL.
You might make the same argument about MS. They have huge market share, they have generated huge profits, they are achieving the objectives they set for themselves, they must be doing it right. Don’t criticize them.
The previous poster is making the point, very simple really, that what is good for Apple, or MS for that matter, may not be good for society. What is good for GM may not be good for America.
Though in fact, the then CEO of GM never made the famous remark, what he said was that what is good for America is good for GM, but history has recorded him as saying the inverse and mocked him for it.
Apple has always been against freedom of information and freedom of use and interoperability. This agenda, if successful, is bad for intellectual freedom and is bad for society. The model is a bad one for society. But it makes lots of money for Apple, and MS, and they have executed it successfully. They won, we lost. This is the point he is making. He is right.
Shows that people still want value for their money, even in a recession.
Shows that some people still *have* money
I think they’ve done a good job and they’re addressing concerns on almost every front, except providing really low cost products. Isn’t that what a company should do?
Living in the U.S.A. and having worked for both large (50,000 employees) and small (300 employees) companies, I’ve heard a lot of ideas on how to run business. Most companies say “but we’ve always done it like that”, which explains why General Motors is in such bad shape. Apple is a good example of a company that has done things differently and not just survived, but flourished.
Now, if they were more like Target, a successful retailer, and put 5 % into each community where there is a store, I’d be a lot happier with them but then, they don’t have to be philanthropic.
According to CNBC, they don’t even give their shareholders dividends. The only way to profit is to buy shares low and sell high.
So, they don’t make something for every category, it’s their choice. Personally, I just want them to fix the operating system, so my 4 year old machine works even more reliably.