News from category ‘Financial’

Six months ago Apple’s quarterly revenue for the first time in approximately 15 years was higher than the Microsoft’s one. But Microsoft was unbeatable with its high profit margins that the company achieved thanks to its software sales. The situation changed in the past fiscal quarter.   Today Microsoft has announced net profit of $5.23 billion for the first calendar quarter (third fiscal quarter) of 2011. Apple last week reported profits of $5.99 billion over the same period, which corresponded to the company's second fiscal quarter of 2011. It seems that Apple finally surpassed its longtime rival in almost all position. Moreover Apple’s market cap is now nearly $100 billion higher than Microsoft's.

Brian White, an analyst at Ticonderoga, believes the delay in the white iPhone’s release and its “mystique and scarcity value” could drive sales to 1-1.5 million units per quarter. White said:

The purchase of consumer electronic devices is not always a completely rational decision, and people buy Apple products for many different reasons, including status, aesthetics, functionality, quality and the ‘cool factor.’ In our view, this delay has created a certain mystique and scarcity value around the white iPhone 4 that we believe could drive incremental iPhone 4 purchases in the range of 1 million to 1.5 million units per quarter until the iPhone 5 potentially comes to market in September.

GigaOM reports that Apple has acquired the iCloud.com domain, used for online data storage, for $4.5 million.

My source, who is familiar with the company, says that Xcerion has sold the domain to Apple for about $4.5 million. Xcerion hasn't responded to my queries as yet. At the time of writing, the Whois database showed Xcerion as the owner of iCloud.

The purchase of iCloud.com could be a sign confirming Apple’s intention to rebrand MobileMe. With Apple’s new cloud services preparing for launch, the purchase of iCloud.com could indicate that new services from Apple may be arriving sooner than later.

Recently Fortune discovered that according to Form 4 filing with the Securities Exchange Commission Bob Mansfield, who is Senior Vice President at Apple, sold 38,863 shares of Apple stock. Average price stock was $351.89, thus he got almost $13.7 million. Currently Mansfield owns 501 shares of Apple, which is roughly 1% of his Apple portfolio.

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This week Morgan Stanley analyst Kate Huberty released "10-Q Tidbits", conclusions based on Apple's 10-Q form filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.

Kate found that Apple is going to spend $11 billion on components and other purchases in the March quarter, which is a record $3,1 billion (39%) increase in comparison to the end of 2010.

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Yesterday DigiTimes published a report where it is said that an earthquake and tsunami in Japan had seriously affected the country's supply chain.

Because of the disaster Apple was only forced to order iPad 2 connectors at Taiwan's Cvilux.  Its previous partner in Japan, namely Hirose Electric, became unable to meet demand for Apple because of a power brownout policy in the country. Now Cvilux's business is expected to become more profitable.

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Yesterday Apple reported its financial results for the second fiscal quarter of 2011. In this quarter Apple earned $24.67 billion and net quarterly profit amounts to $5.99 billion. In the year-ago quarter the company’s revenue was $13.50 billion and net quarterly profit was $3.07 billion. Gross margin was 41.4 percent, compared to 41.7 percent in the year-ago quarter. International sales accounted for 59 percent of the quarter’s revenue.  This fiscal quarter is also the best quarter for the iTunes Store with $1.4 billion revenue. $2 billion was paid to developers in App Store.

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In today's early morning trading Apple's stock was down more than 7$ or 2,2%. As you may know, this Wednesday the company is expected to report new record earnings and such news usually increase company's stock price.  However, Jay Yarow from BusinessInsider sees few reasons for the contrary effect:

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According to Reuters, Foxconn is considering investing up to $12 billion in manufacturing facilities to start producing monitors and displays for mobile devices, such as iPhone and iPad, in Brazil. At that moment, the Brazilian government is studying Foxconn's investment plan. Brazilian minister of Science and Technology Mercadante has been negotiating with Foxconn for more than three months to convince the company to invest $12 billion throughout the next 5 years. Не also reported that Foxconn is preparing to begin manufacturing the iPad in Brazil by the end of November. The project would involve the recruitment of 100,000 new employees (including 20,000 engineers) as Foxconn already has three factories in Brazil to assemble products for Sony, Dell, and HP.

It seems that jailbreaking of iOS devices become a really profitable business, at least for Kevin Lee, a George Mason University senior, who managed to earn $50,000 a year by jailbreaking and unlocking iPhones. At first, it was a hobby for him that eventually grew into a real business with 30-40 clients per week asking for jailbreak, Cydia installations, graphical customizations and “unlocks” to use the iPhone on wireless carriers otherwise unsupported by Apple.  To achieve success, Kevin posted posting a “Get Your iPhone Jailbroken Today” ad on the popular online community. That helped him to get hundreds of requests. But his business goes against Apple’s rules and as far as we know, at that moment his ad was already removed from the site.

The new numbers saying how many iPad 2 units Apple received from its suppliers in March were recently revealed.  A report claims that Apple received between 2.4 million and 2.6 million of the iPad 2 units in March. Given regular stock-outs of the iPad 2 in March, Apple presumably sold through the entirety of shipments it received. That would mean Apple sold at least 2.4 million units in March. Moreover suppliers noted that sales of the iPad 2 are running faster than the first-generation device. For comparison, the first-generation iPad took 28 days to reach its first million sales. Apple has been silent about sales of the iPad 2 since the device launched in the United States early last month.

Market research firm comScore released details of the smartphone market share for the November 2010 – February 2011 period. The company surveyed more than 30,000 U.S. mobile subscribers and found out that Samsung the top cellphone manufacturer with a 24.8% market share.  Apple ranked 5th place with a 7.5% share in February, up 0.9% from November 2010. As comScore notes Apple saw the “strongest gain” thanks to the release of the Verizon iPhone 4, which was the “most acquired handset in the month of February” in the United States. Though, among the mobile operating platforms Google’s Android system demonstrates the strongest growth.

69.5 million people in the U.S. owned smartphones during the three months ending in February 2011, up 13 percent from the preceding three-month period. Google Android grew 7.0 percentage points since November, strengthening its #1 position with 33.0 percent market share.

Yesterday Apple posted on its website an announcement saying that it will reveal its earning for the second fiscal quarter of 2011 and host a conference on April 20th. The company is expected to provide sales numbers for the iPad 2 and the Verizon iPhone, which was initially rumored to have sales “below Apple’s expectations”.  During the conference the company plans to discuss financial results of its second fiscal quarter. The conference call starts at 5:00 PM Eastern / 2:00 PM Pacific after release of financial results which typically comes around 4:30 PM Eastern.

Apple is taking donations in order to help Japan earthquake and tsunami victims. The company created an option in the iTunes Store that allows everybody to make donation to the American Red Cross for the Japanese victims. To make donation, visit this page and choose to donate $5, $10, $25, $50, $100 or $200. Everything happens through the iTunes account you already have.

Your gift to the American Red Cross will support our disaster relief efforts to help those affected by the earthquake in Japan and tsunami through the Pacific. Your support will enable the Red Cross to provide shelter, food, emotional support and other assistance to victims of all disasters.

Multiply analysts expect that Apple could sell 600, 000 iPad 2 during this launch weekend. On launch day of the first-gen iPad, on April 3, 2010, the company sold 300,000 units of WiFi-only original iPad. iPad 2 is expected to outpace the original model. Tim Bajarin, an analyst at Creative Strategies, believes that sales of the iPad 2 could reach 500,000 this weekend. Analysts from Romand & Renshaw and Piper Jaffray & Co. also expect the iPad 2 to outsell its predecessor. The two leading reasons for more iPad 2 sales have to do with more stores selling the device on opening day and the addition of the white model. Moreover, early reviews of the iPad 2 have praised Apple for improvements made to the device.