market

Apple’s stock soared the day after the company reported its record breaking quarter with over $74 billion in revenue and more than 74 million iPhones sold, and now Apple’s stock has reached a new all-time high during trading. The company briefly touched on $120/share during trading this morning and is on track to break its previous record closing high soon.
Expand
Expanding
Close

Apple broke many records with its latest quarter reporting $74.6 billion in revenue and $18 billion in profit with 74.4 million iPhones sold, numbers which greatly surpassed both Apple’s guidance and the even higher consensus analysts predicted, and Wall Street is taking notice.

Following a dismal day for the market yesterday which saw Apple down a few points ahead of its earnings report—it was soon back on the rise in after hours trading—both Apple and the Dow are climbing this morning largely due to those record numbers yesterday. Hovering around 7.5% higher since opening this morning and occasionally crossing 8%, Apple is positioned to cross its previous record high shortly.
Expand
Expanding
Close

Update: Apple crosses $700B market cap…

Apple’s stock today closed at a record high of $118.62 per share (post 7-1 split) with a market cap of nearly $700 billion at $695.7 billion.
Expand
Expanding
Close

IDC has announced preliminary PC shipment numbers for the fourth quarter of 2013, with Apple dropping from third to fourth place on the list. Apple shipped about 438,000 fewer machines than the same quarter in the previous year, allowing Lenovo to catch up and overtake them, despite Lenovo’s gain of only 163,000 shipped units.

HP, Dell, and Toshiba maintained the same positions as the previous year. While most companies lost a portion of their market share this year, Lenovo and Dell managed to claim most of the free space in the market. Overall the market saw a 1.6% drop over last year’s sales—about 285,000 shipments.

Gartner, on the other hand, reports that Apple actually gained quite a bit of market share. How these two numbers are so far apart is a mystery, but it’s possible that IDC included Surface-style tablets in its numbers, potentially skewing the results in comparison to Gartner’s numbers.
Expand
Expanding
Close

Research firm IDC is out today with preliminary data from its quarterly study tracking worldwide tablet market share putting Apple at 40% market share compared to Android’s 56.5% of the market in Q1 2013. In the year ago quarter, Apple held 58.1% of the market surpassing Android’s 39.4%. IDC says Android shipments were increased thanks to strong growth of Samsung’s smaller sized tablets, while ASUS moved into the number 3 spot with 350.0% year over year growth due to strong demand for the Nexus 7:

ASUS managed to move into the number 3 vendor spot as it continued to see decent tablet shipment demand from the highly marketed Nexus 7 device. But, with Google’s I/O conference right around the corner and expectations of an imminent device refresh, the company will need to find a way to sustain its momentum. Amazon fell to the number 4 position, once again the victim of a highly seasonal product cycle.

Despite Apple taking number two behind Android for tablet shipments by operating system, it remains the top vendor by OEM taking a 39.6% share of the market vs Samsung’s 17.9% and 5.5% for ASUS. IDC notes that Apple actually exceeded expectations for Q1, where it typically experiences a drop off in shipments, by selling 19.5 million units compared to a forecast of 18.7 million:
Expand
Expanding
Close

An insightful Reuters blog by financial journalist Felix Salmon suggests that Apple’s surprisingly low share price may be due to the evolving nature of the company leaving it between two sets of investors.

Conservative investors, who like slow-growing stocks with high dividends, are constitutionally uncomfortable with the volatility inherent in the tech world. And technology investors, who are happy taking that kind of risk, want to see substantial growth. Apple, notwithstanding the fact that it’s one of the most valuable companies in the world, is falling through the capital-markets cracks.

Apple always used to be the company which surprised and delighted investors and customers alike. Its guidance to investors was deliberately pessimistic, blowing through those figures when it reported actual revenue and earnings. It was notoriously secretive about new products, launching new ones in a playful manner with Steve Jobs’ famous ‘One more thing‘ moments…
Expand
Expanding
Close

Update: AAPL blew away expectations.

At 4.30pm Eastern, Apple will report its Q2 results (and we’ll be covering it live). It’s the day when the last three months of analyst predictions and forecasts come home to roost.

Apple’s newly-realistic guidance revenue is $41b to $43b, with margins of 37.5 – 38.5 percent. These numbers would suggest earnings per share of just over $10 …
Expand
Expanding
Close

via techin5.com

Henry McCracken over at Time has done us all a favor by collecting various data sets that illustrate the state of iOS versus Android.

The data ranges from device marketshare to revenue from app downloads, which presents some stark differences between the two platforms.

We unpack the results below.

Expand
Expanding
Close

Research firm comScore is out with its usual monthly report that ranks the top smartphone OEMs and platforms for the three-month period ending in February. Apple continues to grow its lead this month as top OEM in the U.S., jumping 3.9-percent from November to 38.9-percent of the market and increasing its lead on the second biggest OEM by subscribers, Samsung:

Samsung ranked second with 21.3 percent market share (up 1 percentage point), followed by HTC with 9.3 percent share, Motorola with 8.4 percent and LG with 6.8 percent.

It’s important to point out that the shipped vs. sold argument doesn’t apply to comScore’s results, as its data comes from surveys tracking smartphone subscribers and usage and not sales or units shipped. Google grabs the spot as top smartphone platform at the end of February, but Apple continues to close the gap capturing 38.9-percent of the market (up from 35 percent) compared to Google’s 51.7-percent (down from 53.7-percent):
Expand
Expanding
Close

Last time we checked with research firm IDC, they listed Apple at 68.3-percent of the worldwide tablet market with approximately 9.3 million units of the iPad 2 shipped in quarter two of 2011. While the firm’s estimates for Q3 saw a drop to 61.5-percent of the market, Apple still leads the market and increased shipments from the 9.3 million in Q2 to approximately 11.1 million units in Q3.

To put that in perspective, Apple’s closest competitor, Samsung, is over 10 times behind with just 5.6-percent of the market. The overall tablet market increased 23.9-percent to approximately 18.1 million units, representing a 264.5-percent increase from the year-ago quarter.

As for where Apple stands in comparison to the overall Android tablet market, IDC expects Android tablet market share to increase rapidly in Q4 from just 33.2-percent in Q3 to 40.3-percent. It’s important to note that IDC recently included “media tablets,” such as Amazon’s Kindle Fire and Barnes & Noble’s Nook Tablet, in their worldwide tablet market estimates. These additions will more than likely account for much of the increase.

This morning, Morgan Stanley significantly raised its forecasts for 2012, predicting Apple could possibly sell 90 million iPads during the year (in addition to 190 million iPhones). The analysts apparently have high hopes for Android 4.0’s ability to offer a competitive alternative to iPad going forward:

Expand
Expanding
Close

Top U.S. Brands via Brand Finance

According to Brand Finance, a London-based research firm, Apple is now second to Google in brand value after a 33% increase to overtake IBM, Microsoft, Wal-Mart, and GE for the first time. The firm attributes Apple’s success to “innovative design, loyal consumer base and well-executed marketing activities.”

Google, sitting in the top spot with a brand value of almost $48.3 billion was up 9% among the top 30 U.S. brands analyzed by the Brand Finance. Other top companies other than Apple and Google all seen a significant drop including Microsoft down 9% to $39 billion, and IBM and AT&T both experiencing decreases from the year previous.

Expand
Expanding
Close

The eye-popping chart above (via Fortune) shows Apple is on course to take control of global market share for portable computers (laptops, notebooks, and tablets) in the second quarter of 2011 – but that’s only as some analysts switch to accounting iPads as computers. Deutshe Bank’s Chris Whitmore, author of the chart, describes his findings:

Within the computing market, we see significant opportunity for Apple to take meaningful share in the second half as the Microsoft / PC ecosystem is relatively stagnant, lacking meaningful new offerings.

Many will be quick to point out the spike is due to taking iPad sales into consideration, a device that many analysts debate shouldn’t be considered as a competitor to notebooks and other portable PCs. However, Apple is steadily gaining ground on Dell, Hewlett-Packard, and Microsoft even without the iPad. Whitmore explains:

On the other hand, Apple will be competing with an upgraded Mac OS, new MacBook Airs (and other forthcoming Macs) and a new iPad iOS. Within the Tablet market, the iPad remains the Gold Standard as competitors struggle for mindshare and traction (note HP’s price cuts on the TouchPad). Meanwhile, competing PC manufacturers have suggested Ultrabooks won’t ramp in material volumes until 2012 due to challenges driving price points meaningfully below Apple’s Air. As such, Apple appears particularly well positioned for more share gains heading into the back-to- school and holiday selling season.

Expand
Expanding
Close