The most anticipated results of the September quarter
- that of Apple Inc.(NASDAQ:AAPL) - is scheduled to be announced on Thursday.
This will be the fiscal fourth quarter for Apple and
the entire market will be watching out for data that made it the most valuable
company in terms of market capitalization, beating Microsoft's record.
Sales of its iPhone 5 which went on store shelves on
September 21 will be eagerly awaited. Though it would have got barely ten days
of selling before the end of the month, considering the record number of phones
which were ordered online, deliveries of which are still taking place,
estimates of units shipped range from 10 to 13 million units.
Supply constraints with the iPhone 5 have been doing
the rounds for some time and analysts will hope to get more clarity on this and
where the bottlenecks are and how the company plans to address this.
There have been reports of Apple slowing down
production to fix problems with tools scratching the phone.
The iPhone 5 is the thinnest iPhone yet, and Apple has
gone to great lengths in its design, specifying very tight tolerances that
complicate manufacturing.
With a slew of new launches in the current quarter,
including an iPad Mini, forecasts for the December quarter should be
interesting.
Analysts, on average, expect earnings of $8.91 per
share on revenue of $36.27 billion.
Apple has said it expects earnings of $7.65 per share
and revenue of $34 billion, but it has a tradition of issuing conservative
forecasts.
In the same period a year ago, Apple earned $7.05 per
share on $28.3 billion in revenue.
It's ironic that, at least in part, thanks to Apple, people are becoming more enlightened and technology savvy (by having more access to the internet)...yet with this enlightenment and saviness, they are realizing more and more how Apple's products are inferior and overpriced to boot (this is not to mention Apple's behavior as a company towards people who product its products, to the environment and to its customers)...the Apple fan base may be big, but its loyalty will only carry Apple so far (as has been shown lately).
ReplyDeleteI think the enlightenment have not kicked in yet for the masses. Anyone who thinks Apple products are overpriced must go and sit down and work out the numbers. For the iMac, MacBooks and MacMinis to build up a PC that will perform as good you will pay more for the PC. Im not talking spec sheets. There are dozens of different i5/i7 CPUs and many more motherboard makes and memory modules. When you buy Apple you know the best electronic engineers in the world put together the most optimized system.
ReplyDeleteYou can either hunt around building a PC for 2 months to find out for the same performance you actually paid more, or you can go into an Apple store and get a Mac.
Apple never focused much on specs, how fast is the CPU etc. For Apple its about user experience. If they can give you a better user experience by using a slower processor, what does it tell you about the developing skills of the competitors.
Im not an Apple fan boy, Im actually excited about the Windows 8 launch tomorrow to see what Windows 8 will do in the market, but at the moment Im buying Apple cause its better. Ill move to something else when some else better comes along, but I hope it wont be in the next 50 years.