As 2010 nears its end, it’s time for companies to share how well (or poorly) they performed during the fourth quarter of the year. As is the norm for Apple, Inc., Q4 has been another record breaker for them. Apple posted a record revenue of $20.34 billion and net quarterly profit of $4.31 billion. Compare this to one year ago, that’s up from a revenue of $12.21 billion and profit of $2.53 billion. Says CEO Steve Jobs: “We are blown away to report over $20 billion in revenue and over $4 billion in after-tax earnings-both all-time records for Apple. iPhone sales of 14.1 million were up 91 percent year-over-year, handily beating the 12.1 million phones RIM sold in their most recent quarter. We still have a few surprises left for the remainder of this calendar year.”
Now let’s break it down by product category. Apple sold 3.89 million Macs during the quarter (representing a 27 percent unit increase over the year-ago quarter); 14.1 million iPhones (representing a 91 percent unit growth); 9.05 million iPods (representing an 11 percent unit decline); and 4.19 million iPads were sold, succeeding the number of Macs sold! That’s some crazy stuff right there. And as for Jobs’ “hobby” that is Apple TV? The new model sold 250,000 units over the course of its first 18 days on sale.
Looking ahead to the first fiscal quarter of 2011, Apple CFO Peter Oppenheimer expects revenue of about $23 billion and diluted earnings per share of about $4.80. Saying this was a tremendous quarter for Apple is a huge understatement.
Normally this is where the Apple quarterly earnings post would conclude, but El Jobso couldn’t contain his excitement over the record breaking numbers so he decided to jump onto the conference call (listen to it here) and share some thoughts. Charged thoughts on the competition. Some choice quotes:
On RIM’s business model: “[iPhone] handily beat RIM’s most recent quarter. We’ve now passed RIM and I don’t see them catching up with us in the foreseeable future. They must move beyond their area of strength and comfort into the unfamiliar territory of trying to become a software platform company. I think it’s going to be a challenge for them to create a competitive platform and to convince developers to create apps for yet a third software platform, after iOS and Android. With 300k apps on Apple’s app store, RIM has a high mountain ahead of them to climb.” “I think at least now it’s a battle for developers, and a battle for the mindshare of developers, and a battle for the mindshare of customers, and I think right now iPhone and Android are winning that battle.”
On Google’s Android “openess” & fragmentation: “Google wants to characterize Android as open, and iOS and the iPhone as closed. We think this is disingenuous. Unlike Windows, which has the same interface on every machine, Android is very fragmented. Compare this with iPhone, where every interface is the same.” “Twitter client TwitterDeck recently launched their app for Android. They reported that they had to contend with more than 100 different version of Android software on 244 different handsets. The multiple hardware and software iterations presented developers with a daunting challenge.” “We think this open versus closed argument is a smokescreen that hides the real question: What’s better for users, fragmented versus integrated?” “We are very committed to the integrated approach, no matter how many times Google characterizes it as closed, and we believe that it will trump the fragmented approach, no matter how many times Google characterizes it as open.”
On Flash: “Flash memory? We love flash memory. [laughs]”
On 7-inch tablets: “There are only a few credible [tablet] competitors. And they all have seven-inch screens. This size isn’t sufficient to create great tablet apps.” “”And this size is useless unless you include sandpaper so users can sand their fingers down to a quarter of their size. We’ve done extensive testing and 10 inches is the minimum tablet size.” “Given that tablet users will have a smartphone in their pocket, there’s no point in giving up screen size. Seven inch tablets are tweeners — too big to be a phone, and too small to compete with the iPad.” So it’s safe to say a 7-inch iPad is not on the horizon. And here’s another slam against Google. “Even Google is telling vendors not to use Froyo. What does it mean when your software provider is telling you not to use their software?” And the cherry on top? “…we think the current crop of seven-inch tablets will be DOA–dead on arrival. Their manufacturers will learn the painful lesson that their tablets are too small, and increase the size next year, thereby abandoning both customers and developers who jumped on the seven-inch bandwagon with an orphan product. Sounds like lots of fun ahead.”
OUCH. Steve’s really throwing some punches to the competition here. And the compeition isn’t taking it lightly.
First Google’s Andy Rubin hopped onto Twitter and shared this message with the world: “the definition of open: “mkdir android ; cd android ; repo init -u git://android.git.kernel.org/platform/manifest.git ; repo sync ; make”.” In essence Rubin is trying to make a point that the real definition of “open” is having the ability to use simple command line to compile your own version of Android to play with. Not too much of an argument here since it doesn’t directly match Jobs’ level of criticism, but it’s a very geeky message to Apple and I like it.
Next RIM’s co-CEO Jim Balsillie fired back in a wordy statement directed at Apple. “For those of us who live outside of Apple’s distortion field, we know that 7-inch tablets will actually be a big portion of the market and we know that Adobe Flash support actually matters to customers who want a real web experience. We also know that while Apple’s attempt to control the ecosystem and maintain a closed platform may be good for Apple, developers want more options and customers want to fully access the overwhelming majority of web sites that use Flash. We think many customers are getting tired of being told what to think by Apple.” He goes on to testify against Apple’s quarterly sales figures and ends with this sentence: “As usual, whether the subject is antennas, Flash or shipments, there is more to the story and sooner or later, even people inside the distortion field will begin to resent being told half a story.” Double ouch. Look after the break for the full statement.
And finally Iain Dodsworth, CEO of TwitterDeck, had something to say in response to Jobs claiming that it was a “daunting challenge” for developers to make TweetDeck for various versions of Android software and hardware. Dodsworth tweeted, “Did we at any point say it was a nightmare developing on Android? Errr nope, we didn’t. It wasn’t.” He says that the company only has two employees overseeing Android development of the app and that this proves “how small an issue fragmentation is.” A good retaliation is made by Dodsworth here, but it doesn’t eliminate the fact that Android fragmentation is still an issue.
Good grief!
[Via Engadget, here, here & here; Mashable; thanks AndrewSeely for image help]
RIM co-CEO Jim Balsillie’s statement:
“For those of us who live outside of Apple’s distortion field, we know that 7-inch tablets will actually be a big portion of the market and we know that Adobe Flash support actually matters to customers who want a real web experience. We also know that while Apple’s attempt to control the ecosystem and maintain a closed platform may be good for Apple, developers want more options and customers want to fully access the overwhelming majority of web sites that use Flash. We think many customers are getting tired of being told what to think by Apple. And by the way, RIM has achieved record shipments for five consecutive quarters and recently shared guidance of 13.8 – 14.4 million BlackBerry smartphones for the current quarter. Apple’s preference to compare its September-ending quarter with RIM’s August-ending quarter doesn’t tell the whole story because it doesn’t take into account that industry demand in September is typically stronger than summer months, nor does it explain why Apple only shipped 8.4 million devices in its prior quarter and whether Apple’s Q4 results were padded by unfulfilled Q3 customer demand and channel orders. As usual, whether the subject is antennas, Flash or shipments, there is more to the story and sooner or later, even people inside the distortion field will begin to resent being told half a story.”