Posts by A n o n y m o u s
71 posts • joined Wednesday 11th January 2012 13:43 GMT
Re: The Downside Of Being Fashionable ....
Long term it does not really matter which iPhone they bought - sure they make more profit today on a '5' but those 3GS, 4, 4S users are very likely (think I read it about 80%) to buy an iPhone 'next' time and they become an iTunes customer today. Also selling all those iPods is underestimated since if you have an iPod (especially a Touch) the logical / easy step is to an iPhone / iPad.
Re: The Downside Of Being Fashionable ....
Or when you look at the figures a bit more closely:
iPhone sales up from 37m to 47.8m (up over 29%) despite problems manufacturing the new design and negative issues / publicity related to Apple Maps launch.
iPad sales up from 15.4m to 22.9m (up 49%) and they could not make the iPad Minis fast enough to keep up with demand.
Mac sales were down but the whole market is down and they could not build the new iMacs quickly enough for demand so only ended up selling them in 1 month in the quarter.
Total revenues up 17.7% - gross margins were lower at 38.6% - both higher than their OWN estimates - lower margins probably due to the lower average cost of iPads with the iPad Mini and many people buying older iPhones (at lower cost / free on contract).
All of this was despite it being a 13 week reporting period whereas the same quarter 12 months ago was a 14 week quarter (7.7% longer) - so if you looked at average sales per week they would have been higher still).
Sitting on an even larger cash mountain up almost $16bn to over $137bn.
Re: Unlike Apple subcontractor Foxconn ...
Foxconn do not just make products for Apple.
They could not build enough iMacs, iPhones or iPad Minis to meet demand which is unfortunate but hardly poor demand. So sales and profits would have been higher! Expect many of these to shift into the following quarter.
AAPL beat their estimates and in a 13 week quarter compared to 14 weeks in the previous year. This just shows analysts can get it wrong. As for iPhone 5 being a failure - how when they sold 47m compared to 37m a year ago and had problems with supply so would have sold more if they could have made more.
Would love to know if he owned AAPL shares in his portfolio or just GOOG?
Perhaps it would just be better to charge a higher rate of VAT - companies cannot (so easily) avoid it and it's based on what people actually spend - not so much on what they earn or any profits they make. For instance would you be happy to pay a higher rate of VAT on everything you bought if income tax were reduced.
The problem is countries want to attract companies to set up there - why would a company set up in the UK and pay 20-odd percent corporation tax when it could setup in Ireland, Netherlands, Switzerland etc. and pay much less - with the friendly EU it's made all this possible.
Re: Corporate tax dodgers
It's the same for us - our UK companies make profits abroad (probably paying little or no tax) and bring them back to the UK - you can expect to have it both ways.
Re: No Whammy's....STOP!
Why not raise the limit to a few million then we could call it a REFERENDUM - if governments raise it too high it could almost become one.
"Owing to his poor performance at Apple, Condé Nast Portfolio and Business Insider have both included Sculley on their lists of the worst American CEOs of all time."
Perhaps anything he says should be taken with a pinch of salt or even a heavy dollop of jealousy?
The irony would be if Apple were to take over the leases on some of the stores and turn them into iTemples - sorry Apple Stores ;-)
Re: I wonder who the last person was who
"The expert now has a good job working for the London Camera Exchange."
... but in reality would you buy from LCE if they were 10-20% more expensive?
The basic fact is physical media is not dead but dying - games, films and music are all available online now - it's easier and in some ways better (iTunes Match for example gives you all your music on all your devices). There will always be purists who say the CD version is higher quality - well I imagine CDs will still be available and they could even sell lossless digital tracks.
HMV did not move with the times - consumers are moving digital, smartphones and tablets have just accelerated this trend.
Business rates are killing businesses - they would be better to get it back on VAT, corporation tax and the income tax of the people doing the spending. Taxing the high street to oblivion is accelerating the move to people shopping online.
Re: Sad, but...
As long as there are multiple online retailers there will still be competition. Jessops were not competing with Amazon when Amazon were half the price.
Re: Roll on Flash memory
We are just replacing the last our our rotational drives with SSDs (apart from where pure capacity rather than performance is a concern - i.e. servers where we store backups etc.). Every application is different but we have benchmarked two (just mirrored) Intel 320 series SSDs (and they are by NO means the highest performance drives) easily replacing arrays of 4-5+ 15k RPM drives.
Re: Question to all and sundry
No warning - really - try using SMART - it reports the amount used / remaining so if anything they are far more reliable and their life is typically far more predictable.
We typically use them mirrored but that's more to do with the fact we are paranoid about downtime - we even mix part worn SSDs with new(er) ones so they should not fail at the same time. Would recommend Intel SSD drives and ideally ones with super capacitors - especially in database applications.
Re: Actually...
Think he's been reading (or worse) the Rolex catalogue a few too many times - 27 jewel movement, waterproof to 300m (despite the fact it's never likely to go more than 3m) and an expression of your individuality... ahhh that's better.
It's typical - they tempt you with Infinity in just a few months - then put the date back - stops you going to another provider in the meantime.
Re: Misleading
Yes having your exchange updated is only half the story. Our exchange was updated but BT said we are too close to the exchange - nice. Only slight 'silver lining' is it should mean we are a better / earlier candidate for FTTP instead.
The benefit Apple has is it's revenue stream is ongoing. Someone like HTC or Samsung sell an Android phone today and make very little (if anything) ongoing as you are then a Google customer. Apple sell you the phone and then all the apps / media for years to come so they are a bit more like Amazon in that they could suffer lower margins on the initial sale knowing they have future revenue coming in.
The fact is most people who do NOT buy an iPhone do it due to cost. Sure there are some die-hard Apple haters but if there were two phones with about the same spec and price - one was an Apple running iOS and the other was [someone else] running Android most people would pick the Apple one.
So a lower cost iPhone may help widen the user base but does risk eroding profits at the high end as based on the number of 3GS iPhones I still see a lot of people are still happy with a slightly less capable phone.
Anyone else considered the 'physical' keyboard has only a certain amount of life left - with soft keyboards, laser projected keyboards, voice recognition etc. - i'm not saying it will happen in the next 2-3 years but do you not think in 5-10-15 years from now?
Of course that's not so much a problem for a device you are buying today but think the future is more likely to be just tablets (screens) with soft keyboards / voice recognition and (for a time) optional keyboards at your desk or think ones like the Surface or Asus Transformer.
For now think people are likely to want to pick either a tablet OR a laptop / ultra notebook as these convertible designs are going to add bulk / weight / cost to either.
They were too busy seeing if they could - they did not stop to think if they should?
I have concerns about using any company that makes money by effectively mining my data to sell ads and if I were a GOOG investor I would be concerned that about 99% of their revenue comes from search.
Do people ever stop to consider how easy it would be to switch to an alternative if it were as good / better / you got too concerned about Google's privacy? 10 seconds.
Maybe Apple should buy Google?
Re: Nobody?
Android is here to stay just maybe not on Samsung. Apple have iOS and it's unique to them - Samsung are just like any other manufacturer. Long term I can see Motorola being dominant with Android as Google are going to want to push that brand unless they are happy to just own the patents.
Re: Nobody?
iOS based phones are only about 15% of all phones shipped - so I'd say that is having an alternative?
Re: Maybe...
A more interesting statistic would be to compare how many people received an 'other' tablet and wanted an iPad and how many received an iPad and really wanted 'another' tablet. Pretty sure more would have wanted the iPad.
Most of the 'returns' to the Apple Store will be to exchange for a different model - don't imagine many people spending £270-400+ on a device would get completely the wrong MAKE but can think they bought a black one and changed their mind for a white one etc.
The only relevant statistic would be the number returned for REFUND as a percentage of those sold - if Apple have 2x as many returned (in raw numbers) but sold 10x as many that suddenly tells a different story.
Re: ipod
You are like the dad whose son wanted some 'branded' trainers (like all the other kids) but instead bought him £5 ones from [insert cheap shop] and wondered why he got teased and his feet hurt.
$400m sounds generous for a company that made just $1m revenues - of course Apple could just buy someone else or do the same in-house. Think if I were Waze I would have sold.
Re: Thank goodness I don't have kids
But will you still be saying that when you are a lonely old man ;)
You make a choice to have kids (well some are happy accidents for some people) and £400 iPads should be the least of your worries.
Posted in Apple to upgrade to '5G WiFi' this year?
Nope - the 5G is 5th Generation - see: http://5gwifi.org (scroll down to 'Evolution').
Re: ipod
Not sure that purposely buying something they did not ask for at Christmas is really teaching them a valuable lesson - what - sometimes you don't get what you want - get used to it. If someone had asked for 10 things I would rather get them 7 they wanted than 10 they didn't.
A different tablet may suit your needs but they may have already had an extensive iTunes collection - what you are suggesting is more of 'I know better' - is that a good lesson to teach?
Re: You pays yer money, you takes yer choice
Hmm. Great eBook reader that you can also get on an Android or iOS device. Can't really imagine any compelling reason to save a few quid and get a device (Amazon Fire) that is more heavily locked down when there are so many Android or iPad devices available. Seems they can do everything the 'Fire' can do - and more.
If you are strapped for cash the Nexus 7 is probably the better bet or if you like Apple products the iPad is bit more expensive but may be supported for longer etc. - so over it's lifetime it's not a massive extra.
Re: ipod
So pea-pod and you got her an iPod anyway but pee-pod and you got her a Galaxy when she wanted an iPad - bet she was thrilled.
"Am I the worst father out there?"
Probably not the worst.
Re: I have to say..
I would agree with that. If money is not the issue most people would choose Apple. Most people choose Android because the phones / tablets are cheaper and most people do not root their devices either.
Posted in Apple to upgrade to '5G WiFi' this year?
It says 5G WIFI not 5G as a successor to 4G cellular standards like LTE.
Re: Hahahahahahahahahaha
All Your Androids Are Belong To Us.
I've been driving down the M6 - joined the toll road and it's been telling me to leave, do a U-turn, drive across fields - did I - no - I had sufficient common sense to realise this did not seem right. If I were driving across Australia in areas where I was warned to take extra water and be prepared enough to be able to purify water 'in the field' I would certainly ask / check directions before leaving, have a backup, have some sense...
Re: Could be interesting
>> Disclaimer: The brakes we installed in your car might not work every time.
Then you would not buy it.
You could apply your logic to anything - how about being an email provider and downtime meant someone did not receive critical information in time resulting in damage / death?
What about people relying on a free mapping app to guide them somewhere - did it not seem strange to be going off course, did they not consult (or have) a normal map as a backup.
Posted in The best tablets for Christmas
Re: There is no 'Best' device any longer
The Kindle Fire is the most walled of gardens - so as long as you do not mind driving on Amazon roads and filling up with Amazon fuel that's just great. The iPad is very open by comparison. Basically I see no reason why anyone would buy a Kindle Fire vs a Nexus 7 or even spend the extra and get the iPad Mini. It's roughly the same price as the Nexus 7 but does so much less.
It's like the people who buy Maglites (who are not buying them as 'batons') with standard incandescent bulbs thinking they have a great torch (flashlight for the US visitors) when you can get something many times brighter, smaller, lighter and with a better battery life - for the same or less.
Re: Simples
They should try looking at the p/e ratio - Apple is remarkably good value for a company actually making huge profits. Take out their cash mountain (and yes it is a mountain) and they look a bargain compared to the stratospheric valuations given to companies like Amazon.
They have a huge installed base - even if their market share is slipping (if it really is) the market is growing rapidly so the volumes shipped are increasing. AND all this is before you factor in any new products or services - how about a proper Apple TV, how about a subscription media service... etc.?
Samsung sell you a tablet today and that's it - no onward revenue - Apple sell you a tablet, then they can make money off the media / games etc. you play. I wonder what Apple's profit per iPad is over it's lifetime compared to Samsung - I recon it's 5-10x.
Re: I bought
Just checked ebay and even locked iPhone 4 handsets seem to be going for the best part of £200 (around $300) so $30 sounds a HOT deal.
