“I expected Apple’s margins to improve last quarter. They didn’t and so the question I needed to answer is why,” Horace Dediu reports for Asymco.
“For a company selling hardware these are extraordinarily high margins. They are higher than those of Google and have narrowed the gap with Microsoft, neither of which has a high proportion of hardware sales,” Dediu reports. “But they are not growing and the reason is to be found in the reason they grew in the first place: because of proportion of iPhones making up the total sales.”
Dediu reports, “As a reminder, the iPhone is a uniquely profitable product. I estimate that it obtains about 50% gross margins… Contrast that with the iPad. As its breadth of offerings increases, it causes a lower price per unit. The iPhone is now at $613 per unit, even with two older generation products available. (The lowest price was in Q2 2012 when the average price was $608.) The iPad is at $449 per unit, down from $662 at launch three years earlier.”
Much more in the full article, including the usual excellent charts, here.