Apple's iPad

[Hauldren Collider]

But what if you're trying to get apple fans in speedos to blow you? Taking it to the beach then would make perfect sense.

[Asher]

All you need to do is pose on guyswithiphones.com (NSFW) and you get that.

[-Jrabbit]

Very nice post, self biased.

[-Jrabbit]

Saw this today. Pretty even-handed iPhone vs Android review, from an pro-android site.

http://www.thesearethedroids.com/2010/03/29/choosing-a-smartphone-part-3-android-vs-iphone/

[self biased]

Very nice post, self biased.

thanks. i thought it apropos.

[Imran Siddiqui]

Saw this today. Pretty even-handed iPhone vs Android review, from an pro-android site.

http://www.thesearethedroids.com/201...oid-vs-iphone/

I love the comment in that review that they are going to say the Android is a worthy competitor to the iPhone because this isn't Engadget (or something like that - I'm paraphrasing) .

[-Jrabbit]

Yep, Apple is really struggling... Exceeding analyst expectations, record revenue and profit levels, stock price at all-time high.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/21/technology/21apple.html?nl=technology&emc=techupdateema1

The company said on Tuesday that iPhone sales surged 131 percent in the most recent quarter, to 8.75 million units, helping Apple deliver a 90 percent rise in profit and a 49 percent increase in sales.

“We had some staggering growth rates,” Tim Cook, Apple’s chief operating officer, said in a conference call with investors.

Apple delivered strong results for the quarter that ended March 31 despite the sluggish economic recovery and the typically slow postholiday season, easily beating Wall Street’s most upbeat estimates.

Shares of the company surged more than 5 percent, to a record high, in after-hours trading following the release of the earnings report.

“We’re thrilled to report our best nonholiday quarter ever,” Steven P. Jobs, Apple’s chief executive, said in a statement. “We’ve launched our revolutionary new iPad and users are loving it, and we have several more extraordinary products in the pipeline for this year.”

Apple, based in Cupertino, Calif., said it sold 2.94 million Macintosh computers, up 33 percent from a year ago, while iPod sales declined 1 percent, to 10.9 million units.

But the company said a shift in sales to iPod Touch devices from less expensive models helped lift iPod revenue 12 percent.

But it was the surging sales of the iPhone, one of Apple’s most profitable products, that surprised analysts and pleased investors the most.

“The iPhone is on fire,” said Gene Munster, an analyst with Piper Jaffray. “The iPhone is being bought by people who don’t have Apple products. I suspect that that will have a halo effect that benefits other Apple products.”

The rapid rise in iPhone sales was driven in part by overseas customers. Unit sales leaped nearly sixfold in Asia, 183 percent in Japan and 133 percent in Europe. International sales accounted for 58 percent of the quarter’s revenue, Apple said.

“The quarter was gargantuan relative to expectations,” said A. M. Sacconaghi Jr., an analyst at Sanford C. Bernstein & Company. He said the majority of the upside was driven by the unexpected surge in iPhone sales.

“People want a computer in their pocket,” he said, “and Apple is at the very forefront of that business.”

The company said net income in the quarter that ended March 31 rose 90 percent, to $3.07 billion, or $3.33 a share, from $1.62 billion, or $1.79 a share, a year earlier, after adjustments for an accounting change. Revenue rose 49 percent, to $13.5 billion, from $9.08 billion, after adjustments.

On average, analysts had expected Apple to report net income of $2.45 a share on revenue of $12 billion.

The company said its gross profit margin rose to 41.7 percent, from 39.9 percent a year earlier.

Apple’s stock stood at $244.59 at the close of regular trading. After the company announcement, its shares rose to around $257 in after-hours trading.

Apple executives did not update investors on sales of the iPad, saying only that they were “shocked” by the high levels of demand for the tablet computer.

“We have been very aggressive with pricing,” Mr. Cook, the chief operating officer, said. “We think the market for the iPad will be large and want to capitalize on our first-mover advantage.” He said Apple’s overall profit margins would most likely erode in the current quarter as a result of the aggressive pricing.

Mr. Sacconaghi said that warning appeared to be the only thing keeping Apple shares from surging even further. “The enthusiasm would be even more unbridled had they not lowered the gross margins outlook,” he said.

The iPad went on sale April 3 after the end of the second quarter, and Apple said it had shipped 500,000 units in the first week. On Tuesday, Apple said that iPads equipped with 3G would begin shipping to customers on April 30.

Apple is not the only company benefiting from the shift to mobile computing. Google recently reported that sales of devices running its Android software were brisk. But the increased competition from Google has not yet affected sales of the iPhone.

Indeed, Apple’s iPhone business, which grew 90 percent in the last quarter of 2009, is gaining momentum. Mr. Jobs said earlier this month that the company had sold more than 50 million iPhones since it introduced the device three years ago.

Apple is expected to release a new version of the phone this summer. Images of the device leaked out this week, after an Apple engineer left a prototype on a barstool and a gadget blog bought the phone from the person who found it.

The phone is expected to ship with a new version of Apple’s mobile operating software and a built-in advertising system, which will probably sharpen the already intense competition between Google and Apple.

Good thing I listened to Asher when he told us how overvalued the stock was at $130.

[Wiglaf]

When did he say that? I want to know for my personal satisfaction.

[-Jrabbit]

I don't know for sure, but remember the point vividly. It was a standard shoutdown between him and that philosophy guy who finally left Poly. Seems like it was January 09, but that's just a guess. Maybe a year earlier.

[Asher]

Yep, Apple is really struggling... Exceeding analyst expectations, record revenue and profit levels, stock price at all-time high.

No one said they were struggling financially.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/21/technology/21apple.html?nl=technology&emc=techupdateema1

Good thing I listened to Asher when he told us how overvalued the stock was at $130.

It was $200.

And right after that AAPL stock tanked. Well below $130, even. You can't compare valuations from years ago to current performance.

It's certainly overvalued right now, too.

[Asher]

https://www.apolyton.net/forums/showthread.php?t=173965

December 27th, 2007. Agathon said:

Apple is now unquestionably the pre-eminent computer company, and the stockmarket knows it. Apple's phone has redefined the way people will interact with mobile devices, and their touch portable music players are a generation ahead of anyone else's, in particular the abortion known as the Zune.

Just for a laugh, some idiotic Apolyton posters suggested last year that Apple was overpriced... Today AAPL was trading at over $200 a share. This is yet another failed prediction of doom from Apolyton's anti-Apple brigade, who, if nothing else, have demonstrated their utter incompetence in tech prediction for the whole of the 6 years I have been a poster here.

I said it was overvalued.

Almost immediately after, the stock tanked in record speed. Because it was massively overvalued.

The current high price just means it is, again, overvalued. It will, again, encounter a correction. You'd have to be pretty stupid to load up on AAPL at this price.

[-Jrabbit]

You'd have to be pretty stupid to load up on AAPL at this price.

Well, that seems obvious. But snagging it at $130-150 two years ago would have been pretty sweet. Hell, even at $200, not a bad rate of return, although buying high is never a smart choice. Don't see how you could still maintain it was overvalued for a medium-to-long term investor at that point, given today's price.

Just sayin'.

[Wiglaf]

Asher does restaruant review applications well at least.

He is also wrong about me being power bottom

[Asher]

Well, that seems obvious. But snagging it at $130-150 two years ago would have been pretty sweet. Hell, even at $200, not a bad rate of return, although buying high is never a smart choice.

If you bought it at $200, you were a moron then, too. Sure if you were holding long-term you would've still gotten a return, but it's a very low return compared to other plays on the market. It went from $200 (when Aggie was pimping it encouraging people to buy while I was saying it's overvalued) to $82 in under a year and was even $118 within WEEKS of Aggie's post bragging about $200.

Just look at the AAPL stock over the past 3 years. Huge peaks and valleys. That happens when a stock is overvalued. It makes it hypersensitive to many intangibles such as baseless speculation and the smell of Steve Jobs' BO on a certain day.

It was overvalued at $200 in December 2007, it's overvalued at $240 now.

When someone says a stock is overvalued that does NOT mean it'll never go higher. I'm not sure if you're aware of that distinction?

[Asher]

This is why I'd stay far, far away from AAPL stock, in a nutshell:

- The earnings are not there to support the stock price
- The price of the stock is based EXTENSIVELY on speculation and assumptions, far more than I'd ever be comfortable with. All stocks are, to some extent, but AAPL's stock is extreme. It's a dreamers' stock, not a realists'.
- It's far too volatile. Just look at the graph.
- It's all tied to Steve Jobs, a man with known health problems and, to be honest, is slightly crazy with his medical opinions. If his cancer returns or he gets some other ailment, you can kiss at least 50% of the stock valuation gone within a week or two.
- Too many eggs in too few baskets: Apple has impressive profit margins and impressive products, but they're not very diversified. iPod sales are contracting as the market saturated and they've countered that with the iPhone, but there will not always be a savior when you compete in as few markets as Apple does. A quarter or two of lower sales of any one of their main devices will sink the stock in a hurry. Too risky.

That's not to say you can make money off the AAPL stock if you know what you're doing. If you're a daytrader you can probably make a fortune if you time it right.

But I buy stocks for the long-haul, and I'm probably a conservative investor (time put in at Lehman may do that for you -- a lot of my colleagues lost almost all their investments overnight). AAPL, to me, is not a smart play.

But I'm just a CS guy. But even then, I can see $240 for AAPL to be a ridiculous price. Just as $200 was in Dec 2007. And you know what? I was right.