Tim Cook Spells Out the Rapid Growth of Apples
iPad

post from Daring Fireball on 24 April 2012 09:03:59 PM. © Daring Fireball

Brian X. Chen, writing for the NYT Bits blog:

Apple sold 11.8 million iPads during the quarter, more than doublethe number it sold last year. Tim Cook, Apple?s chief executive,helped put this in perspective during the company?s earnings call.?Just two years after we shipped the initial iPad, we sold 67million,? he said. ?It took us 24 years to sell that many Macs,and five years for that many iPods, and over three years for thatmany iPhones.?

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Love This Karl Denninger Guy

post from Daring Fireball on 24 April 2012 09:03:59 PM. © Daring Fireball

Remember Karl Denninger? The guy who back in September 2010 called for shorting AAPL and going long on RIM? He had a well-timed piece this morning:

That’s called market saturation and it was inevitable. Even withthe “4S” the spurt was short-lived and now it appears the fanboigame has run its course. Worse is that it appears that only 21% ofAT&T’s activations were new customers.
Apple is due to report this afternoon and if you can find the maththat supports the expected numbers on iPhone sales given thereports from the two carriers in front of their numbers I wish youluck. Apple is “expected” to sell ~35 million iPhones this lastquarter.
Well, we have 7.4 million between the two largest US carriersreported thus far.
Where did the other 27.6 million sales come from?

Hmm, let me think about this. Boy, this is a real head-scratcher. Wait, almost got it? tip of my tongue?

Oh, yeah. The entire rest of the world. That’s it.

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http://market-ticker.org/akcs-www?post=205111

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Apple’s Cook: ‘I’ve always
hated litigation’

post from Apple on 24 April 2012 08:02:42 PM. © Apple

The mobile industry may soon get the patent peace it has hoped for ever since 2010, when Apple kicked off a series of lawsuits that sent Android partners scrambling. In his strongest comments to date on the mobile patent disputes, Apple CEO Tim Cook sounded weary of the toll that protracted patent litigation can take on a company and all but confirmed that Apple is thinking about a cease-fire.

“I’ve always hated litigation, and I continue to hate it.” Cook said, in response to a question during Apple’s earnings conference call regarding reports that the company is considering settlements. “We just want people to invent their own stuff.”

Apple’s decision to sue Google’s Android partners–HTC, Motorola, and Samsung–over alleged violations of Apple patents for the iPhone and iPad was driven in part by emotion, as detailed in Walter Issacson’s biography of Apple co-founder and former CEO Steve Jobs, who died last October.

?I will spend my last dying breath if I need to, and I will spend every penny of Apple?s $40 billion [at the time] in the bank, to right this wrong,” Jobs said in 2010. ?I?m going to destroy Android, because it?s a stolen product.”

However, as I pointed out last October, Cook is not Jobs. Apple has fought valiantly in courtrooms around the world against Android vendors, and has at times appeared to have the upper hand, but as of late April 2012, it has little to show for two years of combat. Apple has a mixed record at the International Trade Commission, and is tied up in other courtrooms over procedural questions and endless hearings.

“I would highly prefer to settle than to battle,” Cook said, but don’t expect Apple to settle easily. Cook also said that he didn’t want Apple to be the inventor for the world, and demanding steep royalties from those which it has sued could discourage others from thinking about following Apple into a market without innovations of their own.

But the sad truth is that our patent system is hopelessly broken, filled with patents of questionable value on all sides that can turn any patent dispute into a stalemate as major corporations buy patents from struggling ones to hurl at each other. With another ridiculous quarter just entered into in the history books, Apple is clearly not suffering any competitive effects from those companies whom Jobs believed stole Apple’s inventions.

It seems Cook would prefer to focus on keeping Apple’s remarkable business on track, and if he finds a way to wind down the mobile patent wars, it could be the smartest thing he does in his first full year as Apple’s CEO.

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HTC Posts 70 Percent Profit Drop

post from Daring Fireball on 24 April 2012 07:03:53 PM. © Daring Fireball

The AP:

Taiwan smartphone maker HTC Corp. reported a 70 percent drop infirst quarter profit as it faces keener competition from AppleInc. and Samsung Electronics Co. HTC said Tuesday that profitamounted to 4.5 billion New Taiwan dollars ($152 million) fromrevenue of NT$68 billion in the three months through March.Revenue was down 35 percent from a year earlier. [?]
HTC chief executive Peter Chou said the company’s biggestchallenge has come from Apple’s iPhone 4S launch that took up thelion’s share of leading U.S. mobile operators’ handset purchases.

Man, imagine how much trouble HTC would be in if the iPhone 4S weren’t such a disappointment.

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http://finance.yahoo.com/news/smartphone-maker-htc-posts-70-093149285.html

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Football Attack Inc Launches Football Attack Euro
2012

post from prMac on 24 April 2012 05:10:00 PM. © prMac

Newest App from Football Attack Inc Now Available on iTunes Store and Google Play. Football Attack Inc., a leading football game developer, today announced the launch of Football Attack Euro 2012, a mobile football game app. You can experience the excitement of this world-class tournament, by trying to predict each of the Euro 2012 scores. Football Attack Euro 2012 allows you to play with your Facebook friends, check your own ranking and that of your friends.

Read The Full Article:
http://prmac.com/release-id-41791.htm

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Apples NC data center: transparency and the
pressure to go green

post from Apple on 24 April 2012 05:03:53 PM. © Apple

This article originally appeared on our premium research service GigaOM Pro.

Buried in last week?s catfight between Apple and Greenpeace over the energy sourcing for Apple?s new North Carolina data center and how clean it would be, was a surprising fact ? that the conversation between Apple and Greenpeace was happening at all.

Apple almost never reveals early details of its operations and isn?t much known for feeling like it has to respond to specific charges from activists. But Apple quickly responded to the Greenpeace report with a statement, disclosing that its new data center would consume 20 megawatts and reminding everyone that the on site solar array and the fuel cells it?s building will offset any power it draws from North Carolina?s coal and nuclear powered grid. It added that its upcoming Oregon data center would be sourced from 100 percent renewable energy.

If there was one takeaway, it?s that even companies as opaque and powerful as Apple, feel they have to communicate that they are taking strides toward sourcing clean energy for their data centers. Greenpeace reported that data center power consumption will grow 19 percent this year alone as the global power draw for data centers tops 31 gigawatts, equal to about 45 coal power plants.

Apple presumably made the decision to build in North Carolina, just as Facebook has gone to Oregon, because of cheap power. But in the last few years so much attention has focused on how webscale IT giants are sourcing their power that having a cheap power source might be nice insurance if you want to expand, but the companies are going to wind up spending quite a few bucks on ensuring their power is relatively clean.

A word about the numbers and transparency

What emerged in the argument between Apple and Greenpeace?s Gary Cook, who authored the report, was, for the lack of a better word, odd. Cook had estimated that the data center would use 100 megawatts based on the billion dollar investment Apple was making. A 100 megawatts is much more than what Apple could generate from its on site renewable energy assets, and so Cook labeled the data center?s power as dirty and noted that renewables would only provide about 10 percent of the power.

Cook responded to Apple?s statement that the data center would draw 20 megawatts, not a 100 megawatts as he?d estimated, by basically saying he didn?t believe Apple, noting that dropping a billion to produce a 20 megawatt data center ?would be taking the ?Apple premium? to a whole new level.? In fairness to Cook, Amazon?s data center efficiency guru James Hamilton himself estimated that the 500,000 square foot Apple facility would draw 78 megawatts, noting that clearing 171 acres of land to build a solar array still wouldn?t provide that significant a portion of the data center?s power needs.

Data Center Knowledge?s Rich Miller stepped into the debate, saying about Cook?s analysis that ?an obvious gap in logic? was that Cook?s accounting for Apple?s billion dollar investment didn?t take into account the cost of the renewable energy investment. We?ve confirmed with Apple that the clean power infrastructure build out is included in that original $1 billion figure used by Apple for the cost of the data center.

But those costs can be reasonably estimated. With solar projects costing around $3.50 per installed watt right now, the 20 megawatts of solar that Apple is putting in likely costs the company around $70 million. As for the 4.8 megawatts of fuel cell power, comprised of 24 200-kilowatt fuel cells, they typically run around $800,000 per cell, adding about another $20 million to the renewable energy investment. Now throw in another $7-10 million for the 200 acre site (real estate hovers around $35,000/acre in Maiden, NC).

So we can estimate that Apple is dropping around a hundred million for its renewables project and with a comparable 28 megawatt Facebook data center costing $210 million, it?s still not completely clear how we get to a billion dollar investment. Though I take Apple at its word, that the data center will be 20 megawatts. Apple may be including ten years of operating expenses and maintenance into their total investment figures for the NC center, not just the up front capital investment, not to mention this is clearly a ten year project and we don?t yet know how Apple will fully use the site.

Now there?s a solution to these endless back of the envelope calculations that keep analysts like myself up at night. Given the large CO2 emissions associated with data centers and modern computing, companies like Apple could just disclose the power consumption of its data centers along with where they get their power. Google discloses its total electricity draw for the company, what percent is renewable, total metric tons of CO2 emissions, then makes the rest up with renewable energy credits. And maybe this last sentence was the purpose of Greenpeace?s report?to remind Apple that there?s a better way to do this.

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Apple earnings: 35.1M iPhones, 11.8M iPads

post from Apple on 24 April 2012 05:03:53 PM. © Apple

Apple is still on a roll. The company reported quarterly earnings Tuesday that surpassed Wall Street expectations thanks to stronger-than-expected iPhone sales and a huge increase in iPad sales.

For the period ending March 31st, Apple recorded $39.2 billion in revenue and $11.6 billion in profit, or $12.30 per share. That compares to expectations of $36.81 billion in revenue and $10.06 in earnings per share.

A year ago, Apple recorded $24.7 billion in revenue and $6 billion in profit. One of the biggest companies in technology continues to grow at an astonishing pace solely driven by its iOS business: Mac unit sales grew just 7 percent compared to last year and iPod unit sales declined 15 percent.

Apple sold 35.1 million iPhones during the quarter and 11.8 million iPads, increases of 88 percent and 151 percent, respectively, to the same period last year. That’s substantially more iPhones than analysts had predicted going into Apple’s earnings, as Erica Ogg pointed out yesterday: the consensus estimate was around 30 million iPhones. It seems that Apple watchers had expected a drop-off in demand following the launch of the iPhone 4S in last year’s fourth quarter as well as the usual slump in consumer electronics buying that follows the calendar into a new year.

Investors were also nervous ahead of Tuesday’s announcement, following earnings reports from Verizon and AT&T that showed a pretty strong drop in quarter-to-quarter iPhone activations. But 35.1 million overall iPhones in the March quarter compares to 37.1 million iPhones sold during the fourth quarter, suggesting that growth was strong outside the U.S.

The iPad number came in around where Apple watchers had guessed: most were expecting just under 12 million iPads to have been purchased over the quarter. That period, of course, was the first full period during which the new iPad went on sale.

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Neue Haas Grotesk

Speaking of type design history.

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http://www.fontbureau.com/nhg/history/

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Apple Q2 2012 Results

Apple PR:

The Company posted quarterly revenue of $39.2 billion andquarterly net profit of $11.6 billion, or $12.30 per dilutedshare. These results compare to revenue of $24.7 billion and netprofit of $6.0 billion, or $6.40 per diluted share, in theyear-ago quarter. [?]
The Company sold 35.1 million iPhones in the quarter, representing88 percent unit growth over the year-ago quarter. Apple sold 11.8million iPads during the quarter, a 151 percent unit increase overthe year-ago quarter. The Company sold 4 million Macs during thequarter, a 7 percent unit increase over the year-ago quarter.Apple sold 7.7 million iPods, a 15 percent unit decline from theyear-ago quarter.

Decent growth for the biggest company in the world. Net profit is up 94 percent from a year ago. Not bad.

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http://www.apple.com/pr/library/2012/04/24Apple-Reports-Second-Quarter-Results.ht
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Tor/Forge E-Books to Go DRM-Free

Tor:

Tom Doherty Associates, publishers of Tor, Forge, Orb, Starscape,and Tor Teen, today announced that by early July 2012, theirentire list of e-books will be available DRM-free.
?Our authors and readers have been asking for this for a longtime,? said president and publisher Tom Doherty. ?They?re atechnically sophisticated bunch, and DRM is a constant annoyanceto them. It prevents them from using legitimately-purchasede-books in perfectly legal ways, like moving them from one kind ofe-reader to another.?

Hope this is the start of a trend.

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http://www.tor.com/blogs/2012/04/torforge-e-book-titles-to-go-drm-free

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