Earnings

Tim Cook: Apple has ‘zero issue’ coming up with new ideas

Continuing our coverage on Apple's earnings call from yesterday afternoon, we have an interesting comment made by Tim Cook in response to a question asked by an analyst during the Q&A portion. The question was in regards to Apple entering new product categories this year.

Obviously, Cook didn't say exactly what the company's plans are for future products, but parts of his otherwise boiler-plate answer were worth noting. The CEO said Apple has zero issue coming up with new ideas, but the challenge is focusing on the few of them that deserve energy...

Tim Cook: we’ve known for some time that ‘iPod is a declining business’

Apple posted some huge sales numbers for the holiday quarter earlier today. During the 3-month period, the company sold 51 million iPhones, 26 million iPads—both records—and a surprisingly high 4.8 million Macs. But not all of its device sales were impressive.

iPod sales decreased by more than 50% since last year's holiday quarter, with Apple selling just 6 million units during the time frame. And during the company's earnings call, Tim Cook admitted that it has known for some time that the iPod is a declining business...

Tim Cook: mobile payments ‘one of the thoughts behind Touch ID’

Apple just finished up its quarterly earnings call a few hours ago where it offered up sales numbers for the holiday quarter, forecasts for next quarter, and everything in between. Tim Cook even fielded some questions from overly-eager analysts.

While most of these questions were fairly dull, there were a handful of them worth noting, including one about Apple's plans for the mobile payment space. Obviously Cook wouldn't answer the query directly, but his response was rather interesting...

15 interesting points from today’s earnings call

Apple just announced its earnings for its September quarter, and despite all of the ‘doom’ talk and lowball analyst predictions, the numbers are actually pretty good. In fact, the company set records for iPhone and iPad sales, and revenue.

We’re just finishing up the conference call, where Tim Cook and his CFO Peter Oppenheimer talked about Apple’s performance, and offered some insight into its future. And as usual, we’ve rounded up the 15 most interesting points for you…

Apple Q1 2014 earnings: 51M iPhones, 26M iPads, $57.6B revenue

As expected, Apple is out with its financial report for Q1 2014 this afternoon. It’s an important one, as it follows a number of product releases in the late fall of last year, and then of course the holiday season, where the company typically posts huge numbers.

And it continues that tradition today. In a press release issued just a few moments ago, Apple announced that it sold 51 million iPhones, 26 million iPads, and pulled in $57.6 billion in revenue during its fiscal Q1—all record-breaking for the Cupertino firm...

Christmas Lumia sales collapse, Nokia schedules media event to – unveil Android device?

After reading a Forbes article two days ago highlighting 24 countries where Windows Phones outsells the iPhone - which disregards the fact that Microsoft is gaining traction in markets where the iPhone doesn’t compete because Windows Phone sales are most in the low-end - I wanted to write a reality check type of an article.

Today, both Nokia and Microsoft were served a reality check after the struggling Finnish handset maker reported a whopping 29 percent lower handset revenue in the Christmas quarter. Worse, sales are decelerating at an alarming clip: Nokia said it sold 8.2 million phones during the Christmas quarter versus Wall Street consensus of ten million units. And they only sold 30 million handsets during 2013.

The company has now scheduled a press conference at the upcoming Mobile World Congress in February amid persisting rumors of a budget Android phone with the Nokia logo on it, the ambitious project apparently code-named Normandy...

Apple may have sold record 55 million iPhones last quarter

Wall Street analysts have been foaming at the mouth since Apple announced it would be discussing its Q1FY14 financial results on January 27. Record holidays have become the norm for the company, but with two new iPhones released last fall, this one is expected to be over the top.

How much over the top? Well Morgan Stanley analyst Katy Huberty says she believes Apple may have sold between 54 and 55 million iPhones last quarter. That would be a new record for the company, and a nice jump from the 47.8 million handsets it sold over the holidays last year...

Verizon’s Christmas quarter: 1.6M new subscribers, $5B quarterly profit

Verizon Wireless, the nation's top wireless carrier, on Tuesday reported its earnings for the 2013 holiday quarter. Despite notable gains from T-Mobile, whose attention-seeking CEO earned his company a lot of coverage while lambasting competitors, Verizon has managed to add 1.6 million new contract subscribers during the Christmas quarter of last year, pushing its total subscriber count to 102.8 million customers.

Quarterly net income of the wireless division was $5.07 billion on $21.1 billion in revenue, or $7.9 billion on $31 billion in revenue for Verizon Communications.

The figure compares favorably to a massive $1.93 billion loss in the fourth quarter of 2012, attributed to the damage caused by Hurricane Sandy and rising costs in employee pensions. More tidbits below the fold...

Apple to discuss holiday sales in January 27 conference call

According to the Apple Investor webpage, the company will hold a conference call on Monday, January 27, to discuss financial results of its first fiscal 2014 quarter. The call is scheduled at 2:00pm Pacific / 5pm Eastern Time.

Apple typically announces quarterly earnings via a press release issued half an hour ahead of these calls and we'll be providing around the clock coverage to make sure you're up to date on all matters concerning the company's business metrics.

The upcoming earnings report should be interesting on many levels as it will cover the all-important holiday season sales data for the iPhone 5s/5c, the iPad Air and iPad mini with Retina display...

Sprint’s Q3 losses shrink to $398M, courtesy of iPhone

Sprint, America's third-largest wireless carrier, announced Wednesday that 1.4 million of the five million smartphones it sold during the third quarter were iPhones, of which 40 percent were to new customers.

The iPhone sales are just under the 1.5 million Apple smartphones Sprint activated during the same period in 2012.

The iPhone numbers have helped the carrier reduce the gap from a $398 million operating loss, rebounding from a $767 million loss during the same quarter in 2012. By comparison, Verizon Wireless, the nation's largest carrier, announced selling about 3.9 million iPhones during the third quarter...

Apple never meant for the iPhone 5c to be an entry-level phone

We're continuing to dig through our notes from Apple's earnings call earlier this afternoon, as a lot of stuff was discussed during the 1-hour broadcast. In addition to financials, Cook and co. offered up some great insight into their operations.

We've already mentioned a few interesting tidbits, and we've just come across another in a comment from Tim Cook on the iPhone 5c. As we've said a few times now, Cook confirms that Apple never intended the 5c to be an entry-level phone...

Tim Cook: new product categories coming in 2014

The last two months have been very busy for Apple, as the company has refreshed a number of its devices including the iPhone, iPad, the MacBook Pro and Mac Pro. But missing from the fall's festivities was an all-new product.

The good news, though, is that it appears at least one is on the way. During its quarterly earnings call today, Tim Cook said Apple believes it has the skills to create 'great products' in categories it's not currently participating in...