iPhone supreme leader Tim Cook said Apple's $2.2bn revenue fall in China this quarter was caused by Cupertino flooding the distribution channel with unwanted stock. Sales in the authoritarian regime tumbled from $7.9bn in Q2 to $5.7bn in Q3, a 27 per cent drop although they were up 48 per cent year-on-year. While defending …

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Thursday 26th July 2012 09:13 GMT Anonymous Coward

takes a bath?

I do not think it means what you think it means.

Hint: it's the inverse of having revenue and profit.

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1. Thursday 26th July 2012 10:31 GMT diodesign
  
  Re: takes a bath?
  
  Hm, I took it to mean any kind of financial loss - such as wiping $2.2bn off a previous quarter's revenue. For the sake of pedantry I've tweaked the headline.
  
  C.
  
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  1. Thursday 26th July 2012 10:36 GMT Annihilator
    
    Re: takes a bath?
    
    "any kind of financial loss" - including a non-existant loss? Apple didn't make a loss, they just didn't make as big a profit as last quarter. That's not a loss.
    
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    1. Thursday 26th July 2012 11:16 GMT diodesign
      
      Re: Re: takes a bath?
      
      "Apple didn't make a loss, they just didn't make as big a profit as last quarter"
      
      OK, lesson learned. I stretched the idiom too far.
      
      C.
      
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      1. Thursday 26th July 2012 12:56 GMT Paul Bruneau
        
        Re: takes a bath?
        
        Also, quarters rise and fall (see "seasonality"). Compared the the same quarter last year, sales were higher. This was a successful quarter.
        
        Finally, "Q3 saw an inevitable pull-back in demand." is not really accurate. I would call it "satisfying demand". A pull-back in demand is when the populace realizes the Kindle Fire really sucks and demand drops as a result, to name one example.
        
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        This post has been deleted by its author
        
        Thursday 26th July 2012 13:17 GMT Paul Bruneau
        
        Re: takes a bath?
        
        Steve Todd already made my point perfectly well--I admit I missed it.
        
        So I'll replace it: All Apple missed was the guessings of ignorant market analysts. They hit their own estimates just fine
        
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  2. Thursday 26th July 2012 10:59 GMT Steve Todd
    
    Re: takes a bath?
    
    No, taking a bath is when you have to sell an asset for less than you bought it for.
    
    If Apple had a stack of iPhone 4S phones sat in a warehouse that they couldn't sell and had to discount then that would be taking a bath. As it was they kept their supply chain stock at normal levels (they aim for 4-6 weeks of stock) and cut back orders from their suppliers to match.
    
    As people keep trying to tell you, the way that business works is to compare against the equivalent quarter from the previous year. They do this because there is normally variation in sales over the year (peaks at Christmas for example). On that basis Apple didn't do badly (20% up on sales) so this is far from a disaster.
    
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