Posted on 01/27/2016 2:06:32 AM PST by Swordmaker
But the company predicted revenue will decline next quarter, its first drop in years
Apple's profits typically skyrocket during the fourth quarter, when new models of the iPhone often arrive and shiny new devices are purchased as holiday gifts. Last year Apple notched a record $18 billion in profit during this period, the largest ever recorded by a single public corporation. This year the company topped that, generating a profit of $18.4 billion on $75.9 billion in revenue during the last three months of 2015. The average sale price for its best selling devices, the iPhone, iPad, and Mac, was also a record high, boosting Apple's margins to 40.1 percent.
But, the company also predicted that revenue for the second quarter of 2016, which for Apple is the first three months of this year, would come in between $50 and $53 billion. That is down from the $58 billion in revenue it booked during the second quarter of 2015, and would mark the first year-over-year revenue decline for Apple in the last thirteen years. This led to slew of questions from investors and analysts who wondered if Apple will now be seen as a value stock, one with a great business but not explosive growth. It was the best of times, it was the worst of time.
There was only one new Apple device released during this period, the iPad Pro. But Apple also began selling the iPhone 6S and 6S Plus during the final three months of 2015. While news that Apple suppliers were seeing a decline in orders has generated headlines in recent weeks, none of that slack is visible in this latest earnings release, thanks in large part to a boost from record-setting sales in China.
Major device sales were flat or down across the board
But revenue was down in Japan and the Americas, with big growth in China being the only reason Apple's revenue hasn't already seen a year-over-year decline. The total number of iPhones sold in Q1 of 2016, 74.78 million, was basically flat against the same period in 2015. iPad sales declined 21 percent from 2015, with 16.1 million sold this quarter. And Mac sales were down three percent from last year, to 5.31 million.
As usual, iPhone sales were by far the largest revenue driver at Apple. But the best growth for the company is now coming from its "services" and "other products". Services -- which consists of things like the app store, iCloud, AppleCare, and Apple Pay -- grew 26 percent year over year to $6.05 billion. "Other Products", which includes the Apple Watch and Apple TV, grew its revenue 62 percent year-over-year, bringing in 4.3 billion this quarter. It's difficult to tell exactly how well each item sold, because the financial results from those products are still lumped into an ever-expanding black hole, a category which is simultaneously the most interesting part of Apple's earnings and the most difficult to tease apart for detail.
Apple highlighted the increasing diversity of its product line by noting that it has over 1 billion active users across all iOS devices within the last 90 days. And it noted that this quarter saw record sales of both the Apple TV and Apple Watch, without providing more detailed numbers.
On today's call with investors, Apple CEO Tim Cook started off by congratulating his team on another record quarter. He then segued to discussing the headwinds Apple faces from the volatile environment in the global economy, and the weakening of most foreign currencies against the dollar. Apple's growth rate, Cook noted, would have been 7 to 8 percent higher without these currency headwinds. It now earns about two thirds of its revenue overseas.
Tim Cook expressed his strongest interest yet in virtual reality
When asked if he thought the smartphone market had reached saturation, or if the longer replacement cycle was driving a decline in sales, Cook demurred, pointing to the "melee" in the global economy as the biggest driver of the year-over-year declines. He highlighted India as a country that Apple expects to grow as a customer base, and noted that the market for Apple's product could recover in Brazil and Russia once the price of oil stopped cratering. Apple also emphasized that, by the measurements it follows, the rate of consumers who are eager to switch from Android to iOS is actually at an all time high, and that 60 percent of its user base has not yet upgraded to the newest iPhone 6 or 6S units.
What kind of future products might give Apple its next big hit in hardware? Perhaps a virtual reality headset? Asked about virtual reality on today's investor call, Cook sounded bullish. "In terms of VR, um, uh, no I don't think it's a niche. I think it can be, it's really cool, and has some interesting applications." Sounds like Apple is interested, although we still don't know how long the company plans to sit on the sidelines.
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It’s really strange when a company can make $18.4 billion in profit - in a quarter - and yet have many say about it that it is a failing company.
Is it the largest in history in constant dollars. I’d tend to doubt it.
“the anal-cysts”, heh heh...
Slavery pays. Who knew?
Why do you keep posting that lie? It isn't true and YOU know it. You've been told the facts and had links provided numerous times. . . and shown that the same factories that assemble Apple products assemble practically every other consumer electronics that are made, that ARE NOT making such profits. That makes YOU the liar, central_va.
Every employee of Apple is voluntary, as is every employee of Apple's supply chain. . . especially those working on Foxconn's assembly lines where, when there are openings on Apple's assembly lines, thousands of applicants line up for every available position. The reason? Apple's contract specifies that the employees assembling its products have to be paid and treated better.
Suicide nets at FoxCon
So? The facts are that Apple did not erect those suicide nets, which were erected at a factory assembling Microsoft Xboxes, HP Computers, Sony Playstations, and Nokia cellular phones. The suicide rate that spurred the erection of those nets in 2010 was 0.75 persons per 100,000 per year out of an population of between 450,000 to over 750,000 during the 18 months in which 18 people committed suicides at FoxConn factories. EIGHTEEN. That's all, out of several hundred thousand workers aged 18 to 32.
The suicide rate of young people in the same age cohort in the Chinese Population in general is 22 persons per 100,000. It appears it is safer to be employed at FoxConn that to be employed or unemployed anywhere else in China. Are you that stupid you would rather PENALIZE FoxConn for keeping their employees safe?
Apple did not put up those nets, central_va. Terry Gou, CEO of FoxConn paid for those nets out of his pocket to assure the safety of the workers at his company's factories. Apple had NOTHING to do with it. Are you so stupid you cannot see the difference between a company that does business with 500 consumer electronic companies and a single company, whose products were being assembled 150 miles away from any of the suicides? Apparently, you are, because you keep repeating this lie, over and over and over, just as you have done again with the presentation of this photo.
The suicide rate among students at American Ivy League Universities also aged 18 to 32 years of age is over 11 persons per 100,000 per year. That's a suicide rate at American universities that is 14.7 TIMES the suicide rate at FoxConn's factories. Why are you not complaining about the horrendous rate of suicides at Harvard, Yale, Dartmouth, Brown, Cornell, Princeton, Columbia, or Yale? Apparently FACTS don't faze you at all in your irrational hatred of Apple.
When have you posted this on the Microsoft Windows thread, central_va, considering the primary products the six workers who DID commit suicide were assembling were Microsoft Xboxes and HP Windows computers???? I would bet the answer is not a single time, right, dayglored?
Funny thing, Microsoft has some of their X-Boxes built by company other than FoxConn. That company is KYE Systems, which IS one of those companies, mentioned above, whose management which is far worse in working conditions!
Where was Microsoft? Where is Microsoft's Code of Conduct for Suppliers?
Where are YOU on these conditions?
Labor Group: Chinese Teens "like prisoners" in Microsoft Tech Factory
By Nick Eaton
Excerpted from Seattle Post Intellegencer - April 13, 2010Thousands of Chinese teens and young adults work 15 hours a day at 65 cents per hour, prohibited from talking or listening to music, in abysmal conditions at the KYE Systems factory where they assemble Microsoft hardware that is exported to the United States, Europe and Japan.
So reports the National Labor Committee, which on Tuesday released the culmination of three years of incognito interviews and photography inside the infamous Dongguan, China, gadget factories. Though Microsoft is not the only company to outsource manufacturing to KYE, it accounts for about 30 percent of the factory’s work, the NLC said.
"We are like prisoners," one worker told the NLC. "It seems like we live only to work. We do not work to live. We do not live a life, only work."
Microsoft said it is taking the claims seriously and has "commenced an investigation."
The workers -- mostly women aged 18 to 25 -- work from 7:45 a.m. to 10:55 p.m. They eat horrid meals from the factory cafeterias. They have no bathroom breaks during their shifts, and must clean the toilets as discipline, according to the NLC.
They sleep in factory dormitories, 14 workers to a room. They must buy their own mattresses and bedding, or else sleep on 28-inch-wide plywood boards. They "shower" with a sponge and a bucket. And many of the workers, because they're young women, are regularly sexually harassed, the NLC alleges.
Where is YOUR outrage at Microsoft? What did Microsoft's CEO do about the sexual harassment of teenage girls at Microsoft's factory? Aren't YOU offended by Microsoft cramming twice as many people into dorm rooms as FoxConn does? How can Microsoft's CEO countenance paying Microsoft's workers only HALF of the starting pay that FoxConn pays for the same work, less than one-sixth the pay FoxConn pays workers on their Apple lines, require them to work longer hours without overtime pay. . . but does ANYBODY hear about this??? Why aren't YOU demanding Microsoft's CEO self-immolate over Microsoft's factory's abysmal practices? Where are the headlines? Where are the suicides???
Oh, did I mention that KYE dormitory pictures have been used as photo "stand-ins" for many "FoxConn dormitory" pictures in Internet Blogs? You can still find some labeled as such.
How about you posting your pictures of the nets a thread mentioning Sony Playstations? I hear crickets from you.
Maybe on a thread on Nokia phones? More silence from your noisy peanut gallery, central_va.
No, central-va, you REALLY WANT to blame Apple for something they were completely disconnected from, except for incompetent and greedy journalists putting Apple's name in the headline to garner clicks and advertising revenue.
You've used the term "kids killing themselves" with abandon in your indictment of Apple and FoxConn. Let's slay that particular shiboleth.
You keep yawping about all the "teenage kids killing themselves in Apple's factories," implying that we should assume that all the "victims" are youngsters, minors. I think we can all agree that "teenage" is well defined as 13 to 19 years of age, can we not? Adulthood in most modern cultures is considered to be reached at age 18, with anything younger being defined as still a child, a "kid."
Two attributed to the count at FoxConn in 2013, should not have been included at all. One of them killed herself after spending several weeks in a government mental facility, and the other was an ex-employee who did the deed several months after voluntarily quitting and returning to his home village, but the China Labor Watch organization added them to FoxConn's list of suicides merely to increase the statistics.
Unfortunately for your distortions of reality, facts are again rearing their disturbing heads.
You see, of the 23 attempted and successful suicide attempts among FoxConn's 450,000 to 750,000 employees at 27 factories from 2009 through 2011, only SIX involved persons who could be defined as "teenage," and only ONE, a month shy of her 17th birthday--who had used an older cousin's ID to get her job at FoxConn--could be defined as a child, a kid--who survived, although paralyzed from the waist down.
Specifically, the 19 suicides and attempts ranged in age from 17 (the survivor) to 28, average age was a little less than 23 years old. The most common age for a worker to attempt suicide at FoxConn was 23 with four. Three each were in the 18, 19, 21, 24, and 25 years old categories. There were two 20 year olds, the one 28 year old and the one 17 year old who failed to kill herself. Oops, no "teenaged kids killing themselves." You are distorting, spouting hyperbole, spreading PROPAGANDA! FUD! Of course, You will probably say I "faked" this all up. However, all of this is documented and easily checkable in the reports from the independent psychiatrists and labor specialists brought in to investigate the suicides from outside China.
If you repost your lies again, I will know you are truly a liar in your heart. . . and you do it deliberately and maliciously.
GloBULLism has had it’s day. Go Trump, go!
I see. Facts mean nothing to you in your derangement.
This is not asking too much for a company that made $18Billion is profit to do.
GlowGULLism and Free Traitors™ have had their run. The raping will stop ad a new sheriff will be inaugurated soon.
You do not understand where a corporation's obligations must be, to its stockholders and the ability to make money, not shove it out the door to please people like you. Apple is selling every product it is able to make and generating INCOME to those stockholders, emphasis on HOLDERS, not traders, who play in a casino, trading stock like markers, commodities, churning stock as one goes up and down, all of them of equal value to them. They don't care about the company or the products being made, or, for that matter, the profits of the company, just that the stock prices move.
True, and I am free to support pro AMERICAN politicians that might slap a deserved tariff on them. I personally do not think the economy should be run based on the interests of international stock holders and corporations that act like NGO's with zero interest in America or the America people. So they want access to the US market they should have to pay to play. Maybe if we raise enough tariffs we can lower the income tax rate. The income tax that globalists love so much.
I am using Apple as an example and not specifically picking on Apple.
And yet Apple still doesn’t manufacture their products within the countries sold. They make them in cheapo China.
So, while you brag they make profit, you are also bragging they cheat their host nations like the USA.
Apple: “Hey, America! Buy our products but we won’t provide you the jobs to make them! Screw you!”
How many times do you have to be told that Apple makes the Apple Mac Pro and iMaco in the United States and also is responsible for creating over ONE MILLION JOBS in the USA directly attributable to the existence of Apple products, before you stop beating your complete LIE of no jobs in the US?
Apple is now breaking ground in Italy for a iOS training facility in Naples.
All Gorilla Glass for iPhones, iPads, and iPod touches are made at Corning, in NY.
A new facility in San Jose, CA, will house between 16,000 and 20,000 Apple employees. That's in addition to the new company headquarters they will finish this year in Cupertino which will have up to 20,000. So much for your no jobs meme.
IPhones for South America are made in Brazil.
Products from over 40 countries are incorporated into iPhones, iPads, and Macs. Ergo, jobs are created to make those products. Again, so much for your no jobs LIE associated with Apple products.
The fact is that your complaint applies to EVERY consumer electronic product even more than it does to Apple. So GIVE IT A REST, CodeToad. By the way, Toad, when was the last time you posted a comment like this in the Android threads or the Windows thread? All of the computers and phones made using those products are made in China or Korea or Japan, yet you only pop-up in Apple threads to beat your tired old lie.
Sorry, but your whining about people speaking the truth of Apple doesn’t change the facts.
Apple brags about huge profits while also stating they cannot possibly spend those profits in the nations they sell those products into by employing those nation’s people to build the products.
Any company could make more profits if they screwed their host nations like Apple does.
Fact: Apple builds products they sell in the USA in China so they can report these huge profits.
No, central_va, you are specifically picking on Apple. Otherwise, why are you not posting these comments on Android threads or the Windows threads? You don't. You repeatedly show up only in Apple threads with the same spam.
As for your "international stockholders," I think you should look to see who the majority holders of AAPL stock are. They are mutual funds, and RETIREMENT FUNDS for American workers, American insurance companies, and American banks, not international organizations. Your and other's constant negative drumbeats of negativity hurts Americans in their retirement accounts and annuities. It's self-defeating stupidity. The only people who benefit from the negativity are the Wall Street traders who love the constant churning of stock value in AAPL. They couldn't give a damn about investment for the future as their idea about future value is what will it be worth in two hours or so.
Merely repeating your LIE doesn't change it into truth, CodeToad. It just makes your LIE more reprehensible. I provided you with facts and you ignore facts in favor of your lying opinion which you cannot back up at all. You are the worst of all propagandists. You continue to repeat your lies in the face of the truth. Typical of Liberals. . . And you attack with ad hominem insults ("whining") those who counter your mischaracterized lies.
Then you compound your lies with more lies. BAH!
Where are your posts in other tech threads decrying any other tech company? Crickets. You, sir, are a hypocrite.
I use Apple products all the time. I think their business practices are basically stupidly and unnecessary anti American worker but that doesn't preclude me form saying their product is good.
Most musicians and and actors are flaming liberal but sometime I like their music and a good movie comes out made by them. I can separate the product form the entity making it.
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