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Fortune (magazine)

14 'Fortune (magazine)' stories April 2011 - July 2015
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Analyst estimates for Apple Watch sales all over the place, ranging from 3-6 million units

Avatar for Cam Bunton Jul 20 2015 - 5:00 am PT
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Since its launch, Apple Watch sales estimates have either shown it as doing incredibly well, or that it’s doomed to failure. Tim Cook hasn’t announced any figures yet, and may not even report them during tomorrow’s quarterly earnings call. But that won’t stop analysts guessing. If recent “estimates” are anything to go by, the financial wizards in charge of looking in to these numbers have no idea what’s going on. Estimates are all over the place…
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Apple tops the list of the world’s most admired companies for 8th year running

Avatar for Ben Lovejoy Feb 19 2015 - 7:40 am PT
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Apple has topped the list of Fortune‘s list of the World’s Most Admired Companies for the 8th consecutive year, with Google taking the number two slot occupied last year by Amazon, while investment company Berkshire Hathaway moved up one slot into third place.

Apple received the top score in all nine categories of innovation, people management, use of corporate assets, social responsibility, quality of management, financial soundness (was never going to be too much doubt about that one), long-term investment value, quality of products and global competitiveness … 
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AAPL earnings will come in well above upper end of company’s guidance, say analysts, at $68.3B

Avatar for Ben Lovejoy Jan 26 2015 - 7:30 am PT
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Fortune has done its usual analyst poll ahead of Apple announcing its Q1 earnings tomorrow, and Wall Street is expecting the company to significantly out-perform its earnings guidance of $63.5 to $66.5B.

The consensus among the analysts Fortune polled — 20 professionals and 15 amateurs — is that Apple’s total sales for fiscal Q1 2015 will come in at about $68.3 billion, up 21% year over year.

That would be $1.8B above the upper end of the expectations Apple set back in October … 
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Think Different ad man recalls the truth behind Steve Jobs narrating The Crazy Ones ad: “a horrible idea”

Avatar for Ben Lovejoy May 23 2014 - 3:55 am PT
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[youtube=”https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-z4NS2zdrZc”]

If you watched the movie Jobs, you may recall Steve recording the words to the “Here’s to the crazy ones” ad, looking at the camera and asking “Is that ok?”. The reality, says Ken Segall, the creative director behind Apple’s famous Think Different campaign, was rather different. Speaking in an interview with MacWorld, he said:

Imagine you’re in this lonely, empty auditorium, he’s just finished that reading, and the words are just ringing in the air, and then their was a great pause, and he said: ‘That’s it, I’m out of here. This is a horrible idea,’ and he stormed off.

While Jobs loved the words, he thought it was a terrible idea to narrate them personally – he thought everyone would think him an egomaniac and they wouldn’t hear the message. Segall says that things didn’t begin well.

He was late and he said ‘I’m really busy today I don’t have time for this, I don’t like the idea, but I’ll give you one read and then I’m out of here’. So he did it.

In the end, Jobs got his way: the ad that was actually aired was narrated by Richard Dreyfuss – but it was the Jobs version that went viral after the death of Apple’s co-founder.

Via Fortune

Wall Street predicts just two percent year-on-year growth in iPhone sales

Avatar for Ben Lovejoy Apr 17 2014 - 5:06 am PT
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Fortune has its usual roundup of what the analysts are expecting Apple to report in iPhone sales next week, and the forecasts make worrying reading. The overall average is for quarterly sales of 38.2 million, which would represent year-on-year growth of just two percent.

Adding to the concern, ten of the 32 analysts included in Fortune‘s poll predict a fall in sales when compared to the same quarter last year.

With the new iPhones having generated record sales in their opening weekend, and Apple having reported all-time quarterly high iPhone sales in Q1, the question is why the pessimism regarding Q2 … ? 
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The spaceship is on the way: aerial photo shows demolition work on Apple’s Campus 2 site

Avatar for Ben Lovejoy Feb 20 2014 - 4:56 am PT
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Apple’s new ‘spaceship’ headquarters has been a long time in the coming, with Steve Jobs presenting the plans to the Cupertino city council back in 2011, but work has finally begun. KCBS eye-in-the-sky reporter Ron Cervi took the above Instagram photo, showing that demolition work on the site is now underway.

While we heard last month that the demolition phase was starting, this is the first visible evidence we’ve seen. Apple also recently constructed a full-size mockup of one small section of the building in order to test construction methods and enable the company to see how the concrete elements would look in real life … 
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AAPL stock more than 3 percent up on China Mobile news

Avatar for Ben Lovejoy Dec 23 2013 - 7:32 am PT
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After the fall in Apple’s stock value when the China Mobile failed to materialise as expected on 18th December, yesterday’s news that the deal had finally been concluded sent the stock shooting back up again, having climbed more than 3 percent at the time of writing (it was up 4% in pre-market trading but has settled).

With the WSJ having reported that 18th December was the day, the market was clearly jittery when nothing materialized. Everything had appeared to be in place: regulatory approval, Apple putting the handsets on sale in China on the opening weekend, China Mobile posters, a pre-order website, in-store displays – and 4G service up-and-running on schedule … 
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Analysts raise AAPL target price in response to Black Friday shopping

Avatar for Ben Lovejoy Dec 2 2013 - 6:35 am PT
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Image: businessinsider.com

Both Deutsche Bank and Global Equities Research have raised their target price for AAPL – the price they expect the stock to achieve – in response to spot checks of Apple sales on Black Friday, reports Fortune.

After spot-checking Black Friday weekend sales, Deutsche Bank’s Chris Whitmore raised his price target to $625 from $575. “We have become significantly more confident in our near-term estimates for Apple” […]

Global Equities Research’s Trip Chowdhry raised his price target to a Street-high $800 after visiting nine Apple Stores and five Targets and talking to “no less than 300 people.”

Anyone planning to invest on the basis of these numbers might want to dig a little deeper, however … 
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How will AAPL stock price react to iPhone 5S/5C launch? Let’s look at history

Avatar for Ben Lovejoy Sep 9 2013 - 6:18 am PT
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A chart posted by Fortune showing what happened to Apple’s stock price for 12 months before and after each new iPhone launch shows that it rose after four of the six launches.

Conventional wisdom says that Apple traders buy the rumor and sell the news, but the series of stock charts Deutsche Bank’s Chris Whitmore shared with clients Monday suggest the opposite.

The brief piece explains the exceptions by observing that the 3G launched just before a major recession and the iPhone 5 when the stock was already at an all-time high, but we wouldn’t suggest investing any money on the basis of those six squiggly lines …

Update: BTIG’s Waltyer Piecyk has posted some more short-term historical data, suggesting that the separation of iPhone announcements from WWDC ended the ‘sell on the news’ phenomenon:

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Apple wins three times more customers from Samsung than Samsung does from Apple

Avatar for Ben Lovejoy Aug 19 2013 - 6:16 am PT
8 Comments

New figures from CIRP reported in Fortune show that Apple wins three times as many smartphone customers from Samsung as Samsung does from Apple: 20 percent switched from a Samsung handset to an iPhone, while only 7 percent switched in the opposite direction.

Unsurprisingly, the biggest chunk of iPhone buyers – 42 percent – were upgrading from a previous iPhone, while the rest were split between those switching from other brands (around 30 percent) and those upgrading from a featurephone (26 percent) – with a handful of first-time cellphone buyers making up the rest.

With iPhone prices higher than the average for Samsung’s range of smartphones, it’s also no surprise to see that the educational attainments of iPhone owners tend to be higher, this being a rough proxy for income.

Fortune will have exclusive excerpt of Steve Jobs bio Monday focusing on relationship with Bill Gates

Avatar for Seth Weintraub Oct 20 2011 - 6:38 am PT
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Fortune Magazine will have an exclusive excerpt of the Walter Isaacson biography Steve Jobs which is due for publication on Monday, the 24th. The excerpt is said to focus on the Frenemy relationship that Jobs had with Microsoft Founder Bill Gates.

The magazine has secured exclusive rights to the sections in Walter Isaacson’s Steve Jobs devoted to Jobs’ relationship to Bill Gates.

The excerpt will hit newstands and the Fortune iPad app on Monday and an ‘excerpt of the excerpt’ will be published online. Most 9to5Mac readers will probably prefer the book which will be released to the public the same day in both hardcover and electronic formats.

Isaacson will also go on 60 Minutes on Sunday promoting the book as well. Steve Jobs is available from Amazon for $17.88 for hardcover, $16.99 for Kindle and $19.79 for CD Audiobook. It is also available online at the iBookstore for $16.99 for iOS devices.

'iSteve: The Book of Jobs' authorized biography coming early next year

Avatar for Seth Weintraub Apr 10 2011 - 6:16 pm PT
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According to ABCNews (via Fortune) Simon and Shuster will be publishing the Walter Isaacson Authorized Biography of Steve Jobs in early 2012. The title is a curious: iSteve: The Book of Jobs

The Jobs book will be his fourth major biography. In addition to Kissinger: A Biography (1992) he has written Benjamin Franklin: An American Life (2003) and Einstein: His Life and Universe (2007). His most recent book is American Sketches: Great Leaders, Creative Thinkers, and Heroes of a Hurricane (2009).

The Jobs book was announced in February of last year but now it has a title and release date.  Fortune has a great profile on Isaacson who has a long history of convincing notable people to tell them their story.


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