Show me where in the 10-K or 10-Q Apple provides these Iphone profit numbers. You won't find it, because it isn't there. Other phone makers don't generally break this out either.
This is just a guess by an analyst with roughly the same credibility as the accuracy of his overall financial predictions. The problem is that there is no such test, since Apple provides periodic earnings guidance so the analysts don't veer too far from the actual numbers. Tavis McCourt, who came up with the 87% figure, was also a permabull on Blackberry, back in the day:
Analysts can make repeated bad calls for years — with no consequences. They just keep covering a company and pull big money for themselves from their investment bank. Nobody even calls them on their bad track record. Why do these guys deserve to keep their jobs in this situation? And some of them even get to go on TV continuing to espouse their lousy point of view.
Last Friday, I was watching Bloomberg TV and have to commend them for calling out one analyst. The analyst in question is Tavis McCourt of Morgan Keegan, based in Nashville, TN, who covers Research in Motion (RIMM). Jon Ehrlichman says: “Please correct me if I’m wrong but I was looking back over the Bloomberg and it says you’ve had an outperform rating on the stock since September 2008. That’s during period in which RIM has lost half its value while the S&P has fought its way back to even. Can you clarify that?”
Tavis’ response: “… No, that’s accurate… um… some stocks go up, some stocks go down. They’ve done much better internationally than what I would have expected and much worse in the US.”
Betty Liu: “Right, but I think Jon makes a good point that you’ve had this outperform rating for a long time on RIM. What would it take to make you change that?”
Tavis: [now angry and somewhat dismissive of the direct criticism] “yeah yeah, look… this would be an easy job if we all just looked backwards…. But, we don’t… and, uh, and, uh, so… you know, I think what it would take would be if there was any meaningful slowing in RIM’s international growth.”
“This would be an easy job if we all just looked backwards.” Well, Tavis, I think the point was that you’ve done a really bad job looking forward for over 2 years now. And it’s not like he upgraded the stock and then back-tracked. He just did nothing. He kept saying RIM was an “outperform” for the entire ride down to a loss of half the company’s market value. And now he says it’s still an “outperform.” What is any investor supposed to make of that?
You believe what you want. Tavis is only one of numerous sources who are coming to similar conclusions. There are lots of sources coming within a few percentages of each other. One has it that Samsung and Apple are sharing 109% of the profits (Asymco). Another is at 114%. You cannot find any of the other cellphone makers except, perhaps LG, making ANY profit, and LG's may be something close to 1% in one overly rosy report. Even back in 2012, Apple was making 75% of Mobile phone profits. This is not a new development. The most conservative interpretation has Apple at about 65% and Samsung at 44%. (Those 2012 figures are known accurately because they were revealed under oath in trial for both sides and Judge Koh refused to seal the transcript.) That is what the numbers show. So keep dancing and thanks for the performance.
Made = revenues - costs = profits.
Show me where in the 10-K or 10-Q Apple provides these Iphone profit numbers. You won't find it, because it isn't there. Other phone makers don't generally break this out either.
LOL! You are trying to teach economics to an economist. That what my degree is in... and you don't understand what you are trying to teach.
You haven't bothered to read Apple's 10-K, have you? Of course not. If you had, you wouldn't ask such a stupid question.
Try Page 27. You will find revenue figures for geographic regions and for product categories listed for 2011, 2012, and 2013. As I told you and everyone, Apple is the only producer that publishes numbers sold. . . and they are much more forthcoming even in the micro data during the year. Apple publishes its profit margin as well. Calculate it.