Complete the following sentence. Apple [verbs] all the things. This morning my section of the Twitterverse reckons the correct verbs are:
- Could buy
- Sues
- Bullies
- Owns
- R-pes
- EULAed, referring to their complex end-user licence agreements
- Cheapens through over-simplicity
- Homogenises
- S-domises
- Accidentally
- Trolls.
That’s how you do technology journalism these days, right? Crowdsourcing your lede is modern and ethical. And compulsory, according to Andrew Hedge.
Just in case you stayed under your rock longer than usual this morning, there’s been two huge stories about the world’s richest technology company overnight.
One, Apple’s record of breaking sales records broke its own record. Apple sold 37.04 million iPhones, up 128% year on year. That kinda puts paid to the whingers who complained that the iPhone 4S was not an iPhone 5. Add to that the sale of 15.43 million iPads, up 111% on the same quarter last year.
In fact, Apple sold more iOS-based devices (that’s iPhones and iPads, as well as the iPod touch) than all of the Android-based devices put together. And we all thought Android was winning. Hah! Take that, Google!
Apple’s quarterly gross revenue was around $46 billion, generating net profits of $US13.06 billion, up 118% from last year. Yes, another record. Oh, and Apple sold 5.2 million Macs, should anyone still care about Macs.
Reporters around the world opened last quarter’s Apple story, changed the numbers, left in the word “record” and pressed “publish”.
OK, maybe that’s not such a big story. “Rich company still rich.”
“We are very happy to have generated over $17.5 billion in cashflow from operations during the December quarter,” said Apple chief finance officer Peter Oppenheimer. I’m sure you are, Pete, I’m sure you are.
As usual, Apple had downplayed its earnings expectations, and as usual everyone acted surprised when the numbers were better than expected. This is how the quarterly Apple Ritual is played out.
Did I mention we’ve seen this all before?
Now much was made of the fact that this is Apple’s first full quarter with Tim Cook as chief executive officer rather than the late Steve Jobs, but it’s a bit too early to consider any of this to be Cook’s work.
The design of the iPhone 4S and the opening up of iPhone availability to more US mobile carriers would have all been done when Jobs was still at the helm. New models take months if not years to develop and refine.
It remains to be seen whether Cook has the drive and sheer force of will to override, for example, engineers’ concerns about antenna design because the purity of form of the iPhone 4’s body was more important than radio reception. Or the charisma to create a reality distortion field so powerful that fanboys couldn’t even see that purity of form is ruined if you have to wrap a fancy-named rubber band around your phone.
Wait another year. And consider the secret attack turtles.
Meanwhile, a Dutch court has found that Samsung’s Galaxy Tab 10.1 tablet did not infringe Apple’s design rights. That’ll doubtless be appealed. And we still have a German court decision next week, an EU decision some time, and an Australian decision in April or May or, if the lawyers keep piling documents onto the judge as they have been, August. Before it’s appealed.
And then there’s the counter-suit of Samsung back at Apple, because Apple has yet to pay the same sort of licensing fees for Samsung’s 3G telephony technology that the rest of the industry is paying. In Australia, that decision’s timeline is interlinked with the Apple versus Samsung one. Before that, too, is appealed.
Ah, the tech-soap that is Apple will run and run! Readers click on links, click-throughs are converted to advertising revenue, and the world turns …
Apple story written. Can I go now?
I have owned a Apple for four years but kept putting it back in the box because i just could not use it. My transformer burnt out on the 26 so I took the apple out of the box again. I struggle to use it but I keep trying. I am not that impressed with it but i have paid a lot of money for me so I sort of must use it! It is certainly different but better I cant really say! As for the iphones and ipads. I lost my mobile and I don’t miss it! Edward James
Apple price-fixes all the things.
Trying to ascertain the point of this story.
I can’t tell whether the between-the-lines space is full of sarcasm, envy or awe.
I think Apple’s icons, fancy graphics and heavy reliance on the mouse are more intuitive for those who like prefer to interact visually and kinesthetically. I’m better with text and keyboard so prefer pcs, but I similarly had to resort to an Apple lap top in an emergency in the mid 1990s and got to like it after a bit of perseverance.
The bums-on-seats used to be what we gleefully self-labelled ‘the digerati’. Nowadays, these people are reluctantly embracing the post-code computer generation, and moving along the bench in their latte-sipping hipster hangouts, because every man, woman and swarovski outlet in the western hemisphere buys Apple.
Product placement? Yew betcha. Name me a TV show which highlights HP, Sony, Dell the way Apple get that glowing Apple logo onto screen.
Who knew for instance, that you could run an NMR machine, a pathology lab, AND a patient management system on Mac? House knew.
Apple also figure large in the Internet standards domain. If you want your technology twist on the Internet to get traction, getting Apple to take it seriously plays about as well as getting google to take it seriously. Microsoft are, (and I say this with SOME regret, because I know some people who work there marginally, and they are nice, smart people) not getting anything like the same traction. About the only ‘sexy’ story there is the surface, and its not appearing in livingrooms anything like as quickly as Apples are.
Android however, is going to win. Win on numbers, win on profit margin, and win on the back of China. You only have to think about why the Chinese were happy to embrace the LCD screen production process wholesale, and now own almost all aspects of physical construction of devices based on LCDs, PV cells included, to ask yourself if they have a stake in the worldwide uptake of Android which exceeds their revenue selling foxcon assembly staff to Cupertino.
I have seen the future, and its Google. But folks, remember we’re GROWING A MARKET. Apples % of share is going to decline but its volume in absolute terms is going to RISE. Rise and Rise, until the consumer penetration in India and China and Brazil matches 78%+ in USA/Europe. Thats a few years off. Android will undoubdtedly have most of the market, but Apple will be selling a lot of SSD backed devices, off the back of a 30 year history of ‘sexy’ in design.
PS I use apple at work, I own an iPhone. I’m trying to think beyond a narrow fanboi perspective here..