“There are 80 million Mac users. The last 12 months saw sales of 18 million Macs,” Horace Dediu writes for Asymco. “As of the end of June there were 886,580,000 iOS devices sold. As of today the total is well over 900 million. One billion sold will happen well before this year is out. Estimates of current iOS users vary but they are probably at least 500 million and could be 600 million.”
“80 million Mac Users and 500 million iOS users add up to about $169.3 billion in sales per year. If we assume that the number of Mac users grows to 90 million and 600 million for iOS then next year Apple should get another $200 million from its population of users,” Dediu writes. “This would be the forward price to sales ratio of about 2.5. Each sale yields a certain net profit, which for Apple is on average 21%. Multiplying 2.5 by (1/.21) gives 12 which is about the P/E ex cash. This exercise summarizes Apple’s valuation nicely: Apple is expected to keep its current customers for about a decade and then disappear.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Smirk.
“And then disappear”?
I’m not following. Was that a joke?
“Disappear” and be replaced by who? RIMM, Nokia, Dell, HP, Microsoft, … These companies are bleeding jobs and cash. In a year or two, Apple will be worth a 1/4 TRILLION and growing still.
Clueless visionary! Does Samsung direct deposit or mail you your checks?
You need to work on your reading comprehension skills.
That’s when we older Mac/iOS owners die off. However we have trained the next one or two generations to take over and retrain their spawn.
Dediu isn’t saying Apple will disappear. He’s saying that that’s how Apple is being valued. Wall Street is cheating Apple shareholders by giving the company such a lousy valuation based on a dead-end future. Microsoft has a better valuation than Apple and basically Apple is quite a bit lower than other tech companies in the industry in regards to P/E. Why? I have no clue. Maybe because of the nature of the smartphone business? Wall Street has this belief that competition will kill Apple in the future but I’ve yet to figure what they’re basing this theory on. Until someone comes out with higher quality products, I’d hardly think Apple could easily be replaced. It would require a lot of mistakes and failed products. Apple would have to cause its own undoing.
Unfortunately, I don’t see the future like these people on Wall Street. I don’t see it at all. I do see possibilities of the future but that’s about it. These Wall Street investors really believe they actually can see the future and value Apple accordingly. Either that or they’re simply manipulating the market for their own benefit. At this point, Apple has a leg up on the smartphone business in the form of profits, retail stores and loyal customers. $150 billion in the bank will buy quite a lot of R&D and anything else Apple could possibly need to stay ahead of the competition if it really wanted to. However, investors don’t seem confident that Apple can hold its position for a long time but that can’t be proven until it happens.
My guess as why ~ it’s psychological…people, especially people with money who consider themselves intelligent, are loath to admit they are wrong about anything. The vast majority of investors are from the Microsoft generation, they invested heavily, in terms of psychological investment, in MS, and they got off on the so called demise of Apple (beleaguered!). In a very real sense they masturbated each other over how right they were and how stupid Apple users were, and they simply can’t handle the current truth ~ that Apple WON. They hold the majority of investment money on the table, and they simply can’t admit they were dead wrong, and so they don’t invest, and do everything to thwart the stock. It’s ok, because the writing is on the wall. AAPL will see it’s fair valuation in due time, as the old losers are replaced by a new generation that “gets it”.
The end result of the goal of excellence as personified in the inimitable Steven P. Jobs.
Elementary my dear Watson, elementary.
I have to disagree with the assertion that there are 500M iOS users.
Take my family for example. I have bought for my own use, 3GS, 4S and now 5S plus a iPad Mini. My wife has had 3GS, 4, 5S and also iPad2 and iPad3. My daughter a 4 and 5. So combined 11 iOS devices for 3 people. Therefore on average each person in my family has had roughly 4 iOS devices.
So lets assume every OS user has had 3 devices. Therefore the # of users will be ~300M.
My point is that there are a lot of users who have bought multiple iOS devices so a number like 500M is unrealistic.
I agree with you. We are a family of 5 with 12 iPad/iPhone/iPod units and 4 macs.
Apple got us hooked. My house has full of Apple’s products and we are going to buy two more iPhones and one iPad soon.
No surprises why everyone obsessed with Apple.
(All of Lenovo, Dell, HP laptops ended up in the trash cans).
500 million users out of 900 million sold sounds accurate:
A lot of old devices get handed down to new users. I know many people who still enjoy their 4 or 4s.
And most devices (by far) are relatively new. The total sales of earlier models (3G down) are only a tiny fraction of the total devices sold because of Apple’s explosive growth.
So there may be 600-700 million active devices for 500 million active users.
Also, some iOS devices like iPads are associated with multiple users.
Apple should dip into petty cash, buy every business and building on Wall Street, sell a half-dozen pencils and a tin cup to each Wall Street drone, whether executive or janitor, fire them all, demolish every building on the street and turn the land into an early Dutch theme park.
$150 billion dollars in cash…a single business has that much cash; it is still mind-boggling to me that any company can be so successful. is a phenomenon.
Make that $ 164 billion now 😀
“a billion here, a billion there, pretty soon you’re talkin’ real money.” – Everett Dirksen
You gotta believe Mr. Cook has that slide prepared “1 Billion iOS Devices Sold”. Jest itching and ready to put in the slide deck.
I hope he gets the opportunity!