Sales of Apple Inc’s iPhone blazed past Wall Street estimates in the third quarter, with U.S. shipments up 51 percent, lifting its stock 5 percent even as profit fell,” Poornima Gupta reports for Reuters.
“The world’s largest technology company said Tuesday that profit fell 22 percent as gross margins fell below 37 percent from more than 42 percent in the year-ago quarter,” Gupta reports. “The company sold 31.2 million iPhones last quarter – far more than the estimated 26 million, and 14.6 million iPads.”
“Chief Financial Officer Peter Oppenheimer said in an interview that iPhone sales rose 51 percent in the United States from a year earlier, and 66 percent in Japan,” Gupta reports “The solid showing eased concerns that growing competition is hurting demand for Apple’s top-selling product as the global smartphone market matures.”
Gupta reports, “Apple’s stock, which has fallen 20 percent since January, rose 5 percent to $437.94 in after-hours trade. It closed at $418.99 on Nasdaq.”
Read more in the full article here.
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Hell Yeah!! Way to go AAPL!
So what of the nay Sayers now who said sales of iPhones were shrinking hmmmmm bunch of bull
I have decided it is not worth upgrading my iPhone until Apple releases an iPhone with an IGZO display. I’m tired of incremental improvements. I want Tim Cook to release devices that will crush the competition. I want shock and awe, bone crushing, heart melting resonance. Is that too much to ask?
Not too bad a performance. But I still think the dividend program was a huge mistake. Buy back makes sense especially with the stock price being so low. SJ always implied he wanted the cash around for hard times he always knew would be coming periodically. Although they still have plenty of cash, I am of the theory that to be nimble, a company like Apple can never have too much cash. Except for getting some stock manipulators off their case temporarily, the dividend program has done zilch for Apple as fas as I can tell.
At this point, Henry Blodgett of Business Insider is having a shit fit. Despite his best efforts to beat down Apple’s stock valuation with an endless cavalcade of gloom-and-doom screeds, Apple simply won’t bend over and grab its collective ankles. His hedge fund buddies must be pissed.
I either want Blodgett to admit that he’s wrong, or be discredited and humbled again. That his trash shows up constantly on the home page of LinkedIn is infuriating. His sites are little more than tabloid crap.
That said, expect the pundits like Blodgett to find something to rip. This time, I’m putting my money on margins. Prepare for more Apple is doomed crap because the company’s margins are shrinking. The hipster snots at The Verge will join the chorus, likely on cue from their patron, Steve Ballmer.
This garbage makes my head hurt. Earnings are earnings are earnings. When are these supposed geniuses going to get a clue?
Apple’s margins are not shrinking. They are returning to their historical levels after a huge aberration last year. 43% margins where a one-time fluke. Apple’s historical margins over the last few years have been around 36% to 37%.
But, but, but . . . Everyone said Apple was doomed and sales were down sooo far.
The Tim Cook era – AAPL won’t recover from phone sales alone. It’s going to take new leadership. When profits fall more than 20% the board of directors start the search for a new CEO. Unless, that is, you’ve been bought off by the CEO and become negligent in your duty to shareholders. It’s called corporate corruption.
@John, @Brian, you don’t have to go outside looking for the likes of Blodgett, the Verge etc, we gottem right here on MDN like JM above.
Replace Tim Cook with Steve Ballmer and AAPL with MSFT and you may be onto something.
Profits falling 20%, in this case, is not what you think it is. Profit did not drop from 56% to 36%, like you think.
After all this constant ANALyst doom and gloom stupidly. People should finally realize that these morons are shills or have a hidden agenda against Apple!
Scum of the earth play with people’s lives – these analists are the real criminals.
And they laugh all the way to the bank whol DOJ and congress single out America’s finest corporate citizen- karma gonna get you all you dogs.
Don’t discount your fellow (wo)man on the spectrum: (s)he has taste too.
Armando, they discontinued that program forty years ago. Do you have evidence that a rogue agency secretly kept it going? If so, you need to get the word out before they shut us all down.
But more to the point, Piccio was gallant, which is appreciated for its essence. I don’t care to think that CIA mind control was responsible for improving his manners. I prefer to think that his thought was genuine.
makes the case for a purpose built less expensive iPhone all the clearer. As I have said for years, it is insane to sell such an expensive device as the iPhone 4 at such low prices. Being old did not automatically mean it made it was that much cheaper to make.
I cannot imagine it making sense seeing the iPhone 5 widely available at budget prices once the 5s is released. Its still a high end expensive product to produce.
2000 engineers work two years to design, build, verify and test what becomes the iPhone 4S out of parts that cost $195 per unit. Apple continues to build at $195 per unit but all those engineers are now working on the iPhone 5S. So it is much cheaper to continue selling the iPhone 4S than it was at launch time. Does that help?
(2000? Include AppleCare engineers working on support systems, QA engineers working on tests, JavaScript engineers working on support.apple.com, etc. Regardless, my numbers are guesstimates and the principal of sunken costs still applies)
Engineers are Apple or any manufacturing company are CONSTANTLY working on new products. So that alone makes this argument moot. So never make a lower priced product like the original iMac because it costs money to design and make? Does that logic sound right to you?
Well it doesn’t to Samsung and everyone single person who makes a living manufacturing products.
Don’t all the gloomy chicken littles who sold AAPL down to 418.99 just prior to the earnings report feel foolish now? No wonder the stock is surging — all these losers are desperately trying to get back in!
——RM
I love how MDN and most commenters here like to color the truth. It’s like the Fox News of apple sites. Sure unit sales looked ok this quarter but profit was down over 21% this quarter and that is HUGE. No matter how you want to color it, this is a big deal and not good for Apple. Because of this, Samsung is now the most profitable phone maker in the world; a title that apple has had since 2009 and that is a shame because Samsung is an awful company. Ultimately the pundits on wall street were correct. Their concern was that Apple isn’t making as much money as it used to because they aren’t ahead of the pack like they used to be and this concern has been legitimized (at least this quarter anyway). They need something to breathe life and excitement back into their products. Don’t just sell them better, make them better.
On a side note I’m not sure what kind of word play MDN is using here but there were no ‘record iPhone sales’. The sales were better a bit better than most expected but by and large lower than sales have been in the last 4 years. So what ‘record’ did it break for ‘record sales’ to be a true headline tag?