Once again, it's that time of year when tourists flock to the beaches, students leave their books behind and Apple executives describe how they've made much more money than the rest of us.
Earlier this week, Apple announced that their third-quarter earnings call will take place on July 21, 2008, at 2 p.m. Pacific time. It's been an up-and-down quarter for Apple's stock. It should also be noted that this will be the first report to contain information on sales of the iPhone 3G, assuming they do go on sale on July 11th without a glitch.
We'll be live blogging the call, so be sure and check back on the 21st. See you then!
In the "premium" computer market -- at least, for machines sold in brick and mortar stores -- Apple holds its own as number one. For the first quarter of this year, Macs accounted for 66 percent of computers that retailed for over $1,000, according to eWeek.
That's not all: 70 percent of desktops sold at the same price point (or higher) are made by Apple too.
Even though sales at physical stores represent only a fraction of the overall computer market, what's most impressive for this stat is the year-over-year growth. Apple had 18 percent of the premium market in January 2006. That grew to 57 percent in September 2007, and just six months later rose to 66 percent. In the same eWeek article, Joe Wilcox quotes NPD's Stephen Baker as saying "Windows notebooks had 'zero percent' growth year over year [and] Apple notebooks had '50 to 60 percent growth.'"
Of course, overall, Apple makes 14 percent of computers sold at retail. Compare that to Apple's nadir in the late 90s of around two percent, and you can see how the changes Apple made to its distribution and retail strategy over the last decade have really paid off.
According to a recent posting on Phillip Elmer-DeWitt's Apple 2.0 column over at CNN, JPMorgan analyst Mark Moskowitz has issued a "cautiously optimistic" report on Apple based primarily on "stronger-than-expected" MacBook sales" for the quarter ending in March. According to Moskowitz, computer sales usually fall-off after Christmas, but Apple has actually had a sales increase -- albeit a small one at only 0.2%.
However, that increase is still better than sales for other PC's, which according to the report, fell 9% in the same quarter. In spite of the sales increase, there still may be other issues that have an effect on Apple's bottom line this year. According to Moskowicz, there may be some difficulty for Apple if the company is not able to deliver a 3G iPhone by Summer.
"As long as there is nothing to suggest that a summer launch of the 3G phone is not a possibility, we would expect investors to look past any near-term disappointment in iPhones," said Moskowitz in his report. The report doesn't specify which MacBook model is responsible for the slight increase in sales for Apple. But with the MacBook Air having just been released during the last quarter, perhaps it deserves the credit?
Apple will release its quarterly earnings report on April 23rd.
Where's all that cash that Apple made from the iPhone and all those iPods, Macs, and iTunes downloads last year going? Why, right into Apple's mattress. According to the Financial Times, Apple currently has $18 billion sitting on their balance sheet, doing nothing much at all. And they're OK with that -- Apple CFO Peter Oppenheimer recently said in the Q1 conference call that they like having that "flexibility." And after all, you never know when you might need to drop $18 billion on something important.
All that money doing nothing isn't so great for Apple's investors though, some of whom apparently want a piece of the pie. They might like to see dividends, stock buybacks, or even actual spending come out of that on Apple's part (later in the piece, I'm surprised to see that Apple only spends 3% of their sales on R&D, while Microsoft spends 14%). But no -- Apple is flush with cash from all their big sales numbers, and they want to apparently stay that way.
Apple Insider has an analyst saying that 10% of iPhones sold in Apple stores in September were being bought by people who are then turning around and selling them unlocked. That seems like a big number when you picture the situation Gene Munster, the analyst, describes: "one Apple employee acknowledged that customers were buying five iPhones per store visit in order to turn around and resell them unlocked."
But is it really that big? 90% of people buying iPhones are sticking with AT&T, so considering that Apple got the support of a network and a slice of the service plan profits, a number like 10% of unlocks actually seems to me like it validates Apple's choice to sell the phone locked. SDKs, jailbreaks, and customer rights (oh my) aside, if only 10% of iPhones out there are unlocked (and the number's probably much lower, as all the iPhones sold before September were probably not unlocked at all), Apple's original decision was justified, in my view.
But I'm not defending them for breaking things with 1.1.1. Apple hasn't released the numbers on September sales yet, but 10% of a lot is still a lot, in terms of bricked iPhones because of the unlock crackdown. I haven't heard any tales of folks who paid a lot for an unlocked iPhone and then got a brick with the 1.1.1 update, but I'm sure they're out there and unhappy.
QuickBooks 2008 apparently was released this week by Inuit-- unfortunately, this makes the release of the Windows client only. Macworld, however, is reporting that if QuickBooks is your thing, you've only got a few more months to wait. Intuit is still planning to release a version of QB 2008 for Mac... in 2008 itself.
The quote comes from the Intuit FAQ for Mac, which says basically that they're waiting for Leopard to reveal itself before they release their own software. Not a bad reason for delay, I guess, but I really wonder what extra features Inuit might include in their software that would require Leopard to work. Will QuickBooks really be using any of the Core Image stuff to beef up their presentations and spreadsheets? Doubtful, but it would be awesome if they did.
At any rate, Intuit says that if you need QuickBooks right now, there's always the 2007 version, and to stay tuned for everything else, including a release date for 2008.
When Steve first announced the iPhone price cut, the nay-sayers were vocal: "It's selling so poorly," they said, "Apple has had to reduce the price significantly."
By Piper Jaffray's estimations, Apple and AT&T was selling an average of 9,000 iPhones per day before the price cut, resulting in 594,000 units sold by September 5th.
Combined with the 270,000 phones sold in the previous quarter, customers would have had to buy an additional 136,000 iPhones to reach 1 million units by September 9th - an increase of 200% in sales volume.
Steve was right: They're selling boatloads of these things, and wanted to quickly sell boatloads more...and that's what's happening.
The weak US dollar and the strong British pound have made iPods more expensive in Britain than ever according to the Guardian newspaper. An 5.5G iPod video that costs £190 in the UK can be purchased in the US for the UK equivalent of £128. This is yet another reason that travelers might want to take advantage of the iPod vending machines now springing up at many US airports and convention centers.
Midnight Apps, as promised, has announced Cha-Ching 1.0 is landing Friday, April 20th, 2007. Cha-Ching is an excellent personal finance management app that I feel safe calling a Quicken killer, at least for many people's needs. Since its beta days, Cha-Ching has featured things like a simplified UI, tagging and other goodies to bring a little fun to tracking one's cash and credit flow, but this final 1.0 promises even more new features. So many new features, in fact, that the company will be announcing one big one each day this week until Friday, when 1.0 will be released for download (in light of this promotion, I tip my hat to their site designer for the sketchup and 'not quite finished' touches on the site). Today's feature: Spotlight Integration - users will be able to search for any transaction or tag from the comfort of a Spotlight window, which means they can also create things like Smart Folders to get a quick glance at transactions without even having to open Cha-Ching.
Stay tuned to Midnight Apps all this week to hear more about the great new stuff coming in Cha-Ching 1.0, but if you're on the fence with whether to purchase, you might want to act sooner than later: now that the app is all growed up, it's going on a 'reverse sale' that ends Friday. Through its time in beta, Cha-Ching has cost $20 and is still at that price - but only for today. Each day this week, Cha-Ching's price will be raised by $5 until Friday, where it will take on its full price of $40. If you ask me, a happy user of Cha-Ching since January when I attended the developer's presentation at the Apple Store during Macworld 07, Cha-Ching is a great value even at its full price, so any day you buy this week will be a bargain. But you don't have to take it from me: you can download a demo of Cha-Ching in its current 0.5.2 beta version to get your finance on and decide for yourself.
The AP reports that the European Commission has launched an antitrust probe into iTunes. According to the article a single track costs $1.56 in the UK, $1.44 in Denmark and $1.32 in Germany and Belgium, while at the same time users are restricted to the iTunes store of their country of origin. "Consumers are thus restricted in their choice of where to buy music and consequently what music is available, and at what price," the commission said in its statement. Apple's spokesman said it was prevented from creating a single European store by its contracts with music labels and publishers and the rights they negotiated with them.
This investigation is apparently separate from the whole ongoing Apple/DRM foofaraw.
This is the question posed by Arik Hesseldahl in today's Byte of the Apple column for BusinessWeek: what should Apple do with its $12 billion in cash and short-term investments? His suggestion: rather than spending more money on acquisitions (such those that led to Logic, Final Cut and Shake), the big A could start a venture capital fund that would help Mac software startups, and established vendors looking to port to the Mac, with seed money to get products off the ground and out the doors.
Hesseldahl points to other tech giants that run their own VC operations, among them Intel, Qualcomm and Motorola. Perhaps it is time for AAPL (back up to $87/share at today's close, erasing a good chunk of Tuesday's losses) to turn some of that spare change into "changing the world, one software company at a time."
Juan Alvarez, developer and CEO at Midnight Apps, gave a CocoaHeads presentation at the Apple Store Thursday night of the new 0.5 version of Cha-Ching, his slick money app that brings financial management out of the stone ages with the beauty of Mac OS X and Cocoa. While Cha-Ching is still in a half-1.0 beta status, it's a pretty impressive app powered by some slick innovation. Read on for some sexy screenshots and feature highlights of this latest version.
Back in August, Apple announced they had found some stock option irregularities and launched an internal investigation to get to the bottom of things. This voluntary audit netted a warning of de-listing from NASDAQ because they had to delay filing their Q3 earnings results (fortuately, NASDAQ cut Apple a break). Today, the big fruit has issued a press release with the findings of this audit, which was performed by a special committee of outside directors, independent counsel and accountants. This crack team had to shuffle through over 650,000 emails and documents (Spotlight to the rescue!), as well as conduct over 40 interviews of current and past employees.
In summary, the investigation's results go a little something like this:
No misconduct by current members of Apple management was found
The most recent evidence of 'irregularities' points to 15 stock option grants made between 1997 and 2002. Said grants were apparently issued before their approval dates
Steve Jobs knew about the grant dates, but he apparently didn't know about the slight-of-hand accounting implications, nor did he benefit from any of them
The data found 'raises serious concerns' of two former officers related to the accounting, recording and reporting of these grants. Apple will provide details to the SEC
Mr J is quoted apologizing to Apple's shareholders and employees for these problems, especially since they happened under his watch, saying "They are completely out of character for Apple." He continues saying "We will now work to resolve the remaining issues as quickly as possible and to put the proper remedial measures in place to ensure that this never happens again," i.e. - somebody's in for a whole lotta iButt woopin'.
In the collateral damage department, Fred Anderson, Apple's former CFO from 1996 to 2004 who now serves on the company's board of directors, has decided now might be a good time to resign from said board.
Finally, Apple and the audit committee agree that the company will ultimately have to restate their historical financial statements to "record non-cash charges for compensation expense relating to past stock option grants." At this time however, the company is still working to analyze their findings and determine which periods will need restating, as well as the differential amounts.
Later today, at 2pm
PT, Apple will webcast their financial conference call for
the 2nd quarter of 2006. As Macsimum
News notes, a number of analysts are saying that Apple will report their second-best single quarter results ever
this afternoon. Stock holders: You may want to get your certificates out and give them a brief hug.
Apple has set a date
for their financial conference call for the 2nd quarter
of 2006 (spoiler alert: things are going well). The whole thing will go down on Wednesday, April 19th at 2pm PT. You
can catch the webcast here. Since we don't get live
keynotes anymore, this will have to do.
Once again, it's that time of year when tourists flock to the beaches, students leave their books behind and Apple executives describe how they've made much more money than the rest of us.
According to a 
Where's all that cash that Apple made from the iPhone and all those iPods, Macs, and iTunes downloads last year going? Why, right into Apple's mattress. According to 
Apple Insider has an analyst saying that 
QuickBooks 2008 apparently was released
When Steve 
The weak US dollar and the strong British pound have made iPods more expensive in Britain than ever 
The AP 
This is the question posed by Arik Hesseldahl in today's 
Back in August, Apple announced they had found some 
Later today, at 2pm
PT, Apple will webcast their 
