Wednesday 24 April 2013

Apple's Tim Cook mentions 'new' product category, whilst suggesting there's no new products until the autumn in their earnings call.


   It's that time of year again folks and the earnings are coming in fast and furiously and today we have the details of Apple's latest results as well as a few interesting comments from their CEO Tim Cook.

   The comments are the best place to start because they're pretty darn interesting to say the least. First and foremost Cook said that there's "the potential of exciting new product categories" later in the year, but he didn't say exactly what, but if we were to hedge our bets we'd say that Apple could be planning to put a touch screen on their computers, something to do with TV and we expect to see that iWatch too. Cook also suggested that the rest of the year will be pretty quiet other than that, saying that, "We've got some really great stuff coming in the fall and across 2014," when he was questioned on whether or not we have any products coming in the summer.

   There might be a distinct lack of new products at the moment, but we can at least expect to see iOS7 this summer, probably at some point in June just before the new iPhone arrives. Cook didn't really have much to say about that device, but when asked about the possibility of bigger screened iPhones he said that there were simply too many trade offs at the moment to justify a bigger screen. He listed "resolution, colour, white balance, reflectivity, [and] compatibility with apps," as the reasons why he doesn't feel there needs to be a bigger screen just yet and naturally he reiterated his belief that the iPhone 5 still has the best display on the market. It seems unlikely that the guys at Apple want to go with a bigger screen because that means a new resolution and seeing as they asked developers to patch up their apps last year, it would be a little harsh to make them rework their apps once again this year.

   There was also a small update on how iCloud is going and it seems that the amount of users keeps going up. This time it's been confirmed that Apple had 300 million people using the service, which is up from 250 million in January and it's a considerable increase from the 150 million people who were using it in July last year!

   So how did the actual results look now we know what Apple's planning for the future? Well the Q2 2013 financial results were again positive for Apple. They netted $43.6 billion in revenue giving them a net profit of $9.5 billion in net profit, so revenue is up from the same time last year, where they brought in $39.2 billion, but net profit is slightly down from the $11.6 billion, which is in part down to the smaller profit margin on the iPad Mini.

   When it comes to the actual numbers which Apple shipped then again things were favourable, with the iPhone sales now at 37.4 million which us up 2.3 million from the year before and iPad sales are now at 19.5 million per quarter which is 7.7 million more sales than the year before! iPods on the other hand were down 56% compared to the year before with 5.6 million iPods sold. Mac sales were flat year over year staying at a nice round 4 million units.

   All of that means that Apple are still in a great position; they now have $145 billion in the bank and the "cash generation remains very strong," especially overseas which is where Apple now pulls in 66% of their income from! Not too shabby at all guys and here's how the earnings look, it's very cyclical!

Via PocketLint (1), (2) and (3) and TheVerge.

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