Stevie J has ensured yet again that Apple has revealed a cracking set of results. Not since the eighties have we seen an increase in Mac sales like we have in the last three months. Whilst the rest of the PC market is scrambling round trying to work out why they aren’t selling any computers (well, not enough) Apple’s results probably hold a few (if not all) of the answers. According to some analysts, other brands just don’t matter anymore.
10 years ago I had a bet with my IT director when I was working at a big London publishing house. Steve Jobs had just returned to Apple and it was a few months before the iMac was launched. This guy waged £500 that Apple wouldn’t see the end of the year. How wrong he was. Since Jobs’s return, and the launch of the iMac, Apple’s stock has been climbing steadily, not just in the stock market sense but in brand terms too.
iPod has had a fair deal to do with it, with its ability to attract non-Mac heads to the Apple lair. But the iPod alone isn’t responsible for this latest jump in Mac sales. A killer lineup of products and of course OS X is what’s really pulled in the crowds. Let’s face it – Apple has simply got it nailed.
Some reckoned Apple would lose it’s polish over the last 12 months or so. After a cracking couple of years of iPod sales, it was suspected Apple’s cart would slowly grind to a halt and it’d be back to where it was 20 years ago. Not so. Constant, killer, innovation and reinvention has meant its stayed ahead of the game. And now? It has $19 billion in the bank. That’d be enough to swallow some pretty big tech names whole. Is it going to do that? Doubt it. It’s just bought a small outfit that makes power efficient chipsets for a couple of hundred million dollars. Mere pocket change, but it could be the source of Apple’s next big thing.
A recent article in Wired quoted an insider as saying the iPhone cost Apple $150 million to create. The iPhone generated twice that in revenue in the last quarter and with a reported $80 profit on every iPhone sold (not to mention the kickback from operators) Apple only needs to sell another 150,000 units or so before the iPhone has paid for all its development costs. With a new chip business to play with, along with a whopping cash pile, what will Apple do next? Only Steve Jobs knows that. All we know is it’s bound to be big.
For now though, there seems to be no stopping the kids from Cupertino. There genuinely doesn’t seem to be a challenger to its might, with the exception perhaps of Sony (who’s now on a bit of a fightback following the Blu-ray victory). No other company seems to have the momentum that Apple has. It even appears to be semi-recession proof. Despite US consumers having something of an Annus Horribilis, they keep eating up as much Apple product as they can get their hands on. Just where is this company’s Achilles heal? We’ve looked hard and can’t see one. Can you?
