“In his recent posts Horace took a look at Apple’s fixed assets and their development over the recent years,” Dirk Schmidt reports for Asymco.
“He also tested the hypotheses that Apple is making investments into machinery & equipment on which iOS devices are produced by overlaying iOS volumes with preceding changes in property, plant and equipment (PP&E),” Schmidt reports. “The question that has arisen is: Are Apple’s investments in PP&E extraordinary?”
Schmidt reports, “We cannot state that CapEx in absolute terms have been extraordinary for Apple, but we can witness that with below average CapEx/sales ratio Apple outgrew in absolute terms Dell, LG, Microsoft, Nokia and Sony and has grown close to the revenue size of Samsung and HP in the last four years.”
It’s all explained, with the usual excellent graphs and charts, in the full article here.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “Fred Mertz” for the heads up.]
By developing and owning their own high tech manufacturing equipment, Apple can insure that rivals cannot make anything close to what they are putting on the market (MBA).
When the unibody iPhone with ground glass front makes its debut, we will once again see Apple’s rivals gnashing their teeth and begging Intel to bail them out.
Good point. In house patents are one thing: developing the next generation of materials is another, and will again cream the competition going forward.