Apple announced its fiscal fourth quarter results and the company reported quarterly revenue of $51.5 billion and quarterly net profit of $11.1 billion.
The growth was fueled by record fourth quarter sales of iPhone, the expanded availability of Apple Watch, and all-time records for Mac sales and revenue from services.
“Fiscal 2015 was Apple’s most successful year ever, with revenue growing 28% to nearly $234 billion. This continued success is the result of our commitment to making the best, most innovative products on earth, and it’s a testament to the tremendous execution by our teams,” said Tim Cook, Apple’s CEO. “We are heading into the holidays with our strongest product lineup yet, including iPhone 6s and iPhone 6s Plus, Apple Watch with an expanded lineup of cases and bands, the new iPad Pro and the all-new Apple TV which begins shipping this week.”
Apple sold 48 million iPhones, up from the 39 million sold in the same quarter last year. The company also sold 5.7 million Macs, up from 5.5 million sold in the same quarter last year. iPad sales dropped from 12.3 million last year to 9.8 million in the most current quarter.
Richest company on the planet, richest that’s ever existed in fact and yet they keep jacking up prices and have a margin that’s three times everyone else’s. It’s getting really hard for me not to see them as just plain old “evil.”
They could easily reduce prices by ten or twenty percent across the board and still be twice as profitable with twice the margins of any other similar company. How much money do you need Tim?
Wait, if demand at the current price points are so high that they can’t even make products quickly enough not to sell out, they should be cutting prices because they have good profits?
If I were you, I’d focus my ire on the cable companies. Or focus on the tax haven aspects. But as long as there’s competition that’s cheaper, calling Apple “evil” for charging what the market desperately wants seems strange.
Clearly, making an excellent computing device that lasts beyond the idiot cycle of chasing upgrades for nothing much, diminishes returns.
My first generation iPad is still a working machine. My iPad 2 is what I’m writing this on now,
iPad has bucked the trend of upgrade for upgrade sake by being equally good (in efficacy for consumers) as the model two years before.
You can’t sell something slightly better to someone who has something already good.
In this respect iPad is more like consoles, where you can go five years between new generations and no one cares. How long did the Xbox 360 last between revisions?
iPad is its own segment, that is too good in each iteration to play the game of shitbox PC upgrades
I agree they could reduce prices, but conflating that with some kind of morality is suspect.
Apple needs to make billions in order to feed the time hole to the future where they get their ideas from
Might make some sense if people were being forced to buy these products. Evil? Why does this bother you?
Prof. Peabody doesn’t understand pricing.
They do continue to sell 16GB iPhones. That’s pretty evil.
Yeah… I hate to say it, but you’re ignorant. You MIGHT be able to call them “evil” if they were forcing everyone to pay those prices, but from a free market, capitalist point of view, they’re charging what they think they can get, and people are buying those products rather than choosing another product. This is how the free market works. IF Apple’s product were too expensive, no one would pay for them, except perhaps for an elite minority. That’s not what is happening.
And if Apple were simply spitting out devices that use the same components, and manufactured the same way as everyone else, then yeah, that might be evil. But EVERY SINGLE MARKET ON THE PLANET has a brand that sits above and beyond other brands and a customer base that is WILLNG TO PAY FOR IT. Why on earth Apple is singled out compared to everyone else, I have no idea other than there’s a hellavu lot more ignorant people that don’t know a damned thing about electronics.
How so? Many people can get by just fine with a 16GB iPhone. I have a 64GB iPhone and I’m only using 15GB after an entire year.
I can certainly get by — better than just “get by” actually. I have a 16GB iPhone 6. It have nearly between 3-4GBs left on it depending on what I have on it at the moment. iCloud Photos manages my photo space very well. I stream most of my music and keep a few things on the phone for if I lose cell connection. (Thank you, T-Mobile, for giving me free bandwidth for Pandora and Apple Music and many others!) I’ve even recorded video and put together movies of my 75 year old dad riding his new trike recliner bike.
No problems at all.
I agree … in part. Where is the plateau? Macs are also well made machines that do not require annual upgrades. Yet Apple continues sell more and more Macs. We all acknowledge that the growth in Macs is a result of PC conversion. Will the iPad Pro, if not this version then a future one, be compelling enough to drive PC conversion as well and steer the iPad category back into growth? Will that happen at the expense of the Mac?
LOL. You’re effectively saying they made a deal with the devil to become so good at product design, and are saving up for reckoning day.
This result was so good that it didn’t make any news (I’m in Sydney Australia).
I was priming myself for a whiff of bad news which would have allowed the reporters to claim, “Competition from Samsung at the high end and low end manufacturers etc…”
But instead, there was silence.
Well, as they say, no news is good news.
what naive, ignorant nonsense.
first, as a publicly traded company, they have an obligation to their shareholders.
but second — youre hating on them again (as you usually do here), now for being successful.
on their prices — their flagship phone is the same price tier as other flagship phones from google & samsung. wheres your hate there? also, apple routinely gives you more for the SAME PRICE year after year, and sometimes reduces the price. compare an iMac from 1997 to what you get today and youll see the proof.
all my parents need is a simple 16GB phone. they dont need twice or four times as much. why should they be forced to pay for higher capacity (which is exactly what theyd be doing, since nothing is free)
think of the 16GB model as the discounted, entry-level model and youll get it.
That made me go check my usage. I have a 64 GB iPhone 6 and I am not even using 16 GB. Maybe I am evil for wasting all those poor lonely and idle GB’s. 😉
Predestination paradox? Bah!
Yes, Apple is satanic. That’s exactly what I meant. Well done. Nailed it.
Well said that man