“One could get whiplash looking at Apple’s performance in 2013,” Patrick May reports for The San Jose Mercury News. “No major new innovation was announced. But a huge new partnership with China Mobile is expected to goose iPhone sales among that carrier’s 776 million subscribers. There were growing doubts about CEO Tim Cook’s ability to ‘channel’ Steve Jobs and his ‘insanely great’ legacy. But its jaw-dropping market cap approaching $500 billion makes Apple the most valuable company on the face of the earth.”
“Despite worries that it’s lost its mojo, Apple not only dominated the consumer technology gang of eight, making its seven rivals look like revenue pipsqueaks by comparison, but also landed for another year at the very top of the SV150 [Silicon Valley 150],” May reports. “To get an idea of Apple’s sheer heft, look where it stands among its fellow Silicon Valley firms: In the consumer tech sector’s 2013 snapshot, top-ranked Apple posted nearly $174 billion in sales and $37 billion in profits; second-place SanDisk had revenues of $6.1 billion and profits of $625 million. Apple’s sales made up about 90 percent of the entire sector’s total revenue. And thanks to Apple, consumer tech chipped in 27 percent of the total revenue generated by all 150 companies on the annual score card.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Always nice to see the glimmer of reality when it peeks through the unending avalanche of FUD.
And good to know that a company can do well making and selling real stuff instead of just coupon clipping.
Or
Selling 2 for 1 !
Samsung knows the 6 is coming… and have no clue what it is going to be… so might as well keep that marketshare up with the 2 for one deals at VZ…
The telcos love this… S5 now… and a few months the 6… there are people out there that would in fact trade in their S5 for a 6 if THEY feel it’s worth it…
If only i had that kind of $…
MDN… Celebrating a companies willingness to gouge consumers is short lived. Just ask the likes of Sony, Panasonic etc… Sure Apple makes a ton of profits but that is not cause for celebration but rather it cause for concern for unsuspecting consumers and Apple’s own ability to maintain this trend when folks will look to 3 to 4 year cycles before replacing their tech toys..
If I understand you correctly, Apple products don’t delight you and aren’t worth the money they want for them, correct? Everyone wants a bargain and if you don’t see the greatness in Apple products, just go and buy something others stole from Apple and pay almost as much while rewarding the non-innovating thieves.
JP stands for Joker Poops..t
Or JP “Just Poop”
It is up to individual consumers to judge the value of a product. Apple offers me quality, long-lasting products and great customer service at reasonable prices. Do I wish that Apple’s prices were lower? Sure, but only if the company avoids sacrificing its strengths to cost-cutting. If I want cheap, throwaway crap, then I buy it. I don’t go to Apple for that sort of thing.
The very best competing smartphones sell for roughly the same as the iPhone 5s. The very best competing tablets sell for roughly the same as the iPad. I recall companies struggling just a few years ago to produce competing products, much less at competitive prices. After several years, they have found a way to dumb down and cheapen their copy-cat products while using blitz advertising to hype them. Apple refuses to play that game.
Long story short – if you feel “gouged” by Apple, then you are not the type of customer that Apple is seeking. Please don’t buy Apple products.
If you want to enjoy Apple products for free, or even get paid to use them, then become an Apple shareholder. AAPL has put more money into our retirement accounts than we will ever spend on Apple products and services.
If you’ve got $5,200 laying around in a savings account collecting dust (0.025% interest), buy 10 shares of AAPL on Monday with that money. At current levels, Apple will pay you $122.00 a year. After 2 years, you’ll have $244. Spend $600 on an iPhone now, and 2 years from now, sell it for $200. In the end, your iPhone will have cost you $156, or $6.50 a month. With any luck at all, the 10 shares you bought will have appreciated by at least 50%, and be worth about $7,800. Make sense to anyone out there considering an iPhone wannabe?
I grasp what you are claiming, but you are incorrect. Apple has had a historical record of existing as a lucrative company. Nevertheless, in order for that economic power to persist, it must begin to accommodate the consumer and manufacture merchandise that is easily accessible to a more extensive scope of individuals.
Except for the potential for appreciation of principal, these are unassailable facts. On what point am I incorrect, and what exactly am I claiming? Where do you find evidence to back your assertion that Apple “must begin to accommodate the consumer and manufacture merchandise that is easily accessible to a more extensive scope of individuals”? If you’ll forgive my saying so, it sounds like poppycock. I think you’re buying in to a line of BS being put out there by a group of people who get paid to write sensationalism as opposed to fact. Think for yourself. The facts are indisputable.
I think bigdadyjobs‘s response was to KingMel‘s post; not to yours.
As for your own argument about spending savings on AAPL, these two (investing one’s savings in AAPL) and price of an iPhone aren’t really related.
In other words, your argument is somewhat flawed; nothing prevents anyone from investing into AAPL, and nothing prevents them from using the dividend proceeds (which are taxable, by the way, if I’m not mistaken) to buy a Samsung phone instead of an iPhone.
The argument would be solid if there was a direct and exclusive link between the dividends from AAPL and buying an iPhone (in other words, if that’s the only way you could use those dividends, to buy the iPhone).
What the argument does confirm is that AAPL is a solid dividend-paying stock.
Unsuspecting consumers? Like billions of them? The ones that buy Apple again and again? Why do you think Apple’s retention rate is where it is? They make a quality product in a world that is full of cheap throwaway junk. The ones that buy the cheap products are the ones getting duped. They read some specs, and tell themselves it’s just as good. Then they find out – well it just isn’t. Then they buy another brand cheap one, somehow telling themselves this is the one. And it isn’t either. In reality, the price difference for having the real thing is a few dollars a month over that 3-4 year tech cycle.
You probably thought a Yugo was a great deal.
JP: A mark ripe for ripping. Have at him Android!
Nice things cost money.
AAPL is a value play and to the chagrin of idiot stick ANALists, Apple can and will continue to out innovate the rest of the schlock wannabes.
Let’s see how the spin-miesters can say that Apple is doomed or something. I guess that because they are at the top, “There is no way to go but down.” Or the ever popular “Apple hasn’t wowed me for a month so I guess that they can’t innovate anymore and they have to fail because their next rumoured product doesn’t do this or that.”
These statistics are meaningless to an investor since they only compare Silicon Valley-based companies. Long AAPL, but not because they are winning a contest that has Sandisk as the second-place finisher.
That’s amazing coming from the Mercury as they are usually anti-Apple, right Troy?
Quality
Design
Ease of Use
Longevity
Support
Focus
Guts
The first 5 factors are why Apple can sell products at a premium.
Focus is important because Apple only sell what they want to make. They do not make a 1000 variables of the same product and throw in useless gimmicks just to follow some trend. That’s why they take their time to work out where the opportunities in the market lie and not just throw multiple products out just to see what sticks.
Guts is required to stick to doing what you know is right and best for the consumer.
Hahahahaha.,..they said the same thing about a company in Waterloo, Canada a few years ago and look where it is now. Clueless Cook & his posse of idiots.
$160 Billion in the bank versus $1 billion in the bank for Blackberry hahahaha I think Apple will last centuries longer than DCM BlackleBerry!
As many others have said, Apple has not lost its MOJO. It’s the iHating bloggers, fake journalist, FUD fed by competitors that the media happily bend over and ram it up their bottom to spew out the crap from their lips that cluelessly believes that FUD on Apple.
Unfortunate medical imagery for the squeamish, yet your compact description of the whole process works because it is TRUE.
I hope to create an infographic one day. 😉
Bogus stat.imho
I agree apple is on yop.. But sandisk second?
What about Hp goog intel cisco… Etc
Sabdisk is no where near the top
Check thus chart
http://www.siliconvalley.com/sv150/ci_25551210
It’s the “Consumer IT” sector, not the entire 150. There are only eight SV companies in it; Apple, Sandisk, Intuit, Adobe, EA, Leapfrog, Tivo, and Chegg.
Two I’d never heard of. Leapfrog makes tablets and educational games for young children.
Chegg apparently rents college textbooks online.
Hp and goog are not consumer ?
I didn’t define the categories.
Oh, some real facts shine through that make all of those market share leaders look like CRAP! Apple stands alone at the top. But wait they haven’t even released there newest product line, yet. To all the anal-ist FUD APPLE stands at the top. Business is about making money and it looks like Apple’s business is shining a lot brighter than the stupid Anal-ists!
“Despite worries that it’s lost its mojo…” – reminds us of a vote of confidence for the beleagured CEO shortly before he gets the ax. Hopeful sign.