Research archive for AAPL

Apple, the largest company by market cap, at an astonishing 554 billion Dollars as of last evening (that equates to over 9 trillion Rand), reported numbers yesterday. These are numbers for the first quarter of their 2016 financial year. The headline from the company on their investor relations website says: iPhone, Apple Watch, Services & Apple TV Drive All-time Record Revenue. Record quarter all around.

Apple Inc. announced their fourth quarter results post the market last evening, for the quarter to end 26 September 2015. Don't ask why the quarter ends on the 26th of September. By most metrics the results were a beat, a record fourth quarter for the company. Sales of 51.5 billion Dollars were recorded for the quarter, or roughly 560 million Dollars worth of sales a day. That is mind boggling. At the same time of course being the fourth quarter, the company reported full year sales, which were also an annual record at 234 billion Dollars, an increase of 28 percent. Or by the same day measurement, 641 million Dollars of sales per day across the globe, that is pretty crazy.

Apple's worst kept secret, project Titan was laid out in a WSJ article last evening -> Apple Speeds Up Electric-Car Work, the work force is expected to triple to nearly 2000. In fairness to Apple to have a crack, and others like Elon Musk, the combustion engine has not really evolved for decades, the same principles still applies. A self charging vehicle using the greatest energy source known to man (the sun) whilst you are driving (or the car is driving you) is first prize for me. No recharging stations, or getting supercharges of 2 to 3 minutes maximum would be the holy grail. And I am presuming that Apple will be competing in the company of Tesla, producing beautiful products that are functional and that work well. I think that there is enough space for new entrants. Or am I wrong, will Apple want to build a peoples vehicle?

Apple unveiled their new product line yesterday, as expected the iPhone upgrades on both the smaller and the bigger model happened, better camera, faster chip and something called 3D touch on the phones. Something called peek and pop, you can watch the film via the Apple website. Jony Ive speaks at the beginning of the video, it sounds like a sales advert, pretty cool actually. It recognises hard pushes, to enable other menus, things you do frequently.

I have been hearing a lot about Apple recently, for starters there are continuously rumours about a car. An Apple Car. Is a vehicle not a commodity? Sort of, I guess. And the newer news is about the iPhone 6s, that seem to be coming, announced in the next week, September the 9th. Here is the invitation: "Hey Siri, give us a hint." I like the idea of Siri, being around to help you, perhaps the best use for Siri is in a motor vehicle, when you really have to focus your attention on the road.

The biggest company in the world by market capitalisation (and cash position) reported numbers last evening after the market closed. I am talking about Apple Inc. A company that makes fine products, their most well know being the iPhone, in the current cycle the 6 (and 6 plus) has been a real amazing product very well received by customers all over the globe. At first take revenues of 49.6 billion Dollars for the third quarter are a beat (and a record), the company reported profits of 10.7 billion, also a record for the third quarter. Earnings of 1.86 Dollars a share. Gross margins improved to 39.7 percent, also better than the corresponding quarter.

Taylor Swift is peeved at Apple and perhaps rightfully so, I can see it from her perspective. She reckons that many artists are too scared to speak out against the giant as a result of their clout, this time it is as a result of a three month free service for people using Apple streaming. Swift does not want her album there, she obviously can afford to be picky I guess, she hardly had a ghetto upbringing. That is not fair, you know what I mean though. So here is the letter: To Apple, Love Taylor. As she says, she is just doing this for the new artist, who cannot look out for themselves yet. She just reckons that Apple should start charging people from the beginning. I guess that might well be right, as she points out, she did not get a free iPhone, why should people get free music?

I could not find the official news on the Apple Inc. website, I had however noticed that Sir Jony Ive had been promoted to Chief Design Officer at the company. If you have been watching the company over the years, you will know exactly who Jony is. According to Wikipedia, Steve Jobs said that Jony was his spiritual partner at the company. They designed many of the products together. Ive has been at the company since 1992, 23 years of being involved with all of the products at the business, having an intimate knowledge of all of them, all of their launches and the inner workings. There are apparently only 22 folks at Apple and the core (no pun intended) have been there for the better part of two decades, they must know each other pretty well. Cult of Mac (yes, really) says that this team rarely gets together for photos of the public kind, here they did recently for the announcement of the watch: Here's the first group picture of Apple's new Industrial Design team.

You cannot keep a good man down. I had to laugh when I saw the Reuters headline: Icahn says "dramatically undervalued" Apple should trade at $240. This link above refers to the open letter to Tim Cook, the Chief Executive Officer of Apple Inc. I like the self back slapping, Carl Icahn is not short of confidence. He speaks about the company having heeded their advice: "We are pleased that Apple has directionally followed our advice and repurchased $80 billion of its shares (yielding the company's shareholders an excellent return), but the company's enormous net cash position continues to grow while the company's shares are still dramatically undervalued." Thanks Carl for that. Stop saying that you are not able to do something, rather adopt the mantra: "Icahn, like Carl". The stock closed up 1.1 percent on the day.

Apple HomeKit, what is it? It is basically your home connected everywhere at any time, i.e. reachable from your mobile phone. Let us say for instance that you go away for the weekend. You do not need the same power that you needed before, right? Less power to be used is a cost saving to you. You can visit the HomeKit developers page for now, that is available. Set your home into zones, connect all the devices, it is all part of the internet of things. Things being devices that we would not necessarily associate with having connectivity, more recently we accept that TV's, fridges, cars, all our lighting and central heating/cooling systems will be integrated into the phones/notebooks/tablets that already connect to the TV. One extra "thing" to remember, the Internet of Things has an acronym that I saw for the first time, memorise it, it is here: IoT.

Apple. Just wow. Their last quarter once again blew estimates away. In truth there is only one risk to their business and that quite simply is a superior product. A superior product to theirs that is adopted with the same uptake of their flagship product, the iPhone. Out there, there could and might be a better product. What it lacks is the adoption and more importantly, the ecosystem. What I mean by that is pretty simple, the ecosystem of Apple draws you in. It is evident in the company numbers, away from the iPhone itself. Mac Sales, a device on which I am writing this message, are set to grow 10 percent this year and continue to take market share away from their peers. Sales in China of Mac units grew 31 percent in the last quarter, when the rest of the PC market went backwards! In total, the company sold 4.56 million Macs, their old flagship product.

I saw a tweet that suggested that it took Apple 74 days to sell their first one million iPhones, you know, the first version. According to some early projections, they may very well have sold 1 million Apple watches on Friday. There was something interesting about that, expectations were probably for more, signs are that there are production problems with the watch. The company will no doubt put on a brave face through these "challenges". Some are cheering the fact that Apple are failing to meet the demand, they were just being cautious is my best guess. The Apple products are awesome, it is hard to wrap your head around the fact that the iPod is only 14 years old, and that is in October this year. iTunes is 11 years old. The iPhone turns only 8 this year in late June. The iPad is only 5 years old. The watch is a few days old, in fact you could argue that many people will take time to adopt the technology.

With the Apple watch becoming available to the retail market tomorrow, this is the most comprehensive review that I have seen so far - Apple Watch Review: You'll Want One, but You Don't Need One. The general consensus is that no one really knows how well the watch is going to do. Great looking product though!

Apple got their first 1 trillion Dollar call last night. By that I mean that Cantor Fitzgerald stuck a target price of 180 Dollars on it, meaning with the current number of shares in issue, 5.82 billion, that equates to 1 trillion bucks. Got it? See the FT story associated with that 180 Dollar price target: Apple climbs after $1tn valuation call. There you go, someone called it.

Apple fleshed out the watch last evening and for us Mac lovers (the electronic kind) released what looks like an amazing new sleek model, in the air category. I switched over to the business channel whilst Tim Cook was delivering his piece and my eldest daughter expressed a desire to get one. In her world the company makes excellent products, they are better than anything else she knows. In the same way for her search is associated with Google and online videos are associated with YouTube. I am not too sure how powerful that is, I am guessing that if I was paying more attention when I was growing up I would have associated pictures with the Kodak brand, we all know how that turned out.