“Apple shares were down nearly 5% in midday trading Wednesday, after the consumer electronics giant late Tuesday posted a rare miss in quarterly sales and earnings,” Patrick Seitz reports for Investor’s Business Daily.
“The Cupertino, Calif.-based company earned $9.32 a share, up 20% from a year ago, on sales of $35 billion, up 22%, for the quarter ended June 30. Analysts polled by Thomson Reuters expected EPS of $10.37 on sales of $37.2 billion,” Seitz reports. “It was Apple’s slowest profit and sales growth in nearly three years. Apple’s guidance for the current quarter also was well below analyst targets.”
Here are five key take-aways from Apple’s fiscal Q3 report:
1. IPhone 5 rumors impacted sales
2. Fall product transition will pinch Q4 margins
3. Apple is not immune to global economic woes (sales in Western Europe were weak)
4. Customers buying cheaper iPhones, iPads
5. Schools are buying lots of iPads
Read more in the full article here.
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Asian suppliers’ shares drop on Apple miss – July 25, 2012
Apple’s earnings miss could take down the stock market – July 24, 2012
Apple misses estimates with $9.32 EPS on $35.0 billion revenue – July 24, 2012
its not a secret anymore that you don’t buy an iphone in the summer unless you have to. same goes for ipad in the holiday season
The hype for the new iPhone is ridiculously bad. So much so that moving back to a summer release makes sense. Ideally you want one big launch per quarter plus the Xmas boost. iPad in march, iPhone on july, macs and iPods etc on fall and spring.
There is nothing “mysterious” about falll transition. New iPods may come, iPhone is coming, maybe even iPad Mini.
They need to go back to the summer release of products. Everyone I know is waiting for the iphone 5 . Apple was wrong waiting on this. unless of course they couldn’t produce it earlier
I’m thinking the product transition is the elimination of iPod Classic, and possibly iPod Nano. They may then lower the prices of iPod Touch to sub-$200 levels to entice music-loving nano-customers to buy those, and introduce the iPad mini in the $200-399 price level for those who used Touches mostly for gaming. That way, it will be iOS all the way in the portables category (except the shuffle).
I don’t think it really matters when iPhone is released. If apple release iPhone in summer, the previous quarter will show low iPhone sale, since a lot of the apple fans wait for the new iPhone.
Just my 2 cents!
Someone has to put a big headline stating that Apple missed analyst’s estimates, not their own, and analysts are always wrong. This is ridiculous, those headlines make people think Apple is going down the drain and loosing money
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I want to buy a new iMac, but I’m holding out to save a bit more and get the new upgrade when it comes out.
The headline should read:
APPLE HAS RECORD QUARTER; misses morons’ wild guesses
I think that Apple feels some kind of fear from Google. google just released nexus 7 tablet which is really hit high. now, shipping time has been delayed up to 2-3 weeks. right now, they stopped getting order from customers because all inventory has been diminished. that’s why Apple needs to release mini ipad coming fall. it’s inevitable. it’s so funny that Steve said that less than 10 inch tablet is useless. so what about now?
Apple didn’t miss sales and earnings estimates, they missed some overpaid Wall Street soothsayer’s predictions, which have always been proven to be wrong. Apple actually blew past their guidance, which these so called “anal-ysts” always ignore.