Yesterday, Apple released the results for its 2013 fiscal second
quarter (which ran from December 30, 2012 to March 30, 2013) and held a
call with analysts to discuss the results. Apple reported revenue of $43.6 billion and net profit of $9.5 billion. Revenue was higher, but profit was lower, than the same quarter last year. But as always, I’m less interested in the financial aspects and more interested in the iPhone and iPad-related announcements. If you want to get all of the nitty gritty details, you can download the audio from the announcement conference call from iTunes, or you can read a rough transcript of the call prepared by Seeking Alpha. Apple’s official press release is here.
But if you just want the highlights of the call that might of be of
interest to iPhone and iPad users, then let’s get started.
- Apple sold 37.4 million iPhones in the quarter. By my count, that means that as of March 30, 2013, Apple had sold over 352 million iPhones. Apple CFO Peter Oppenheimer cited a comScore report that the iPhone was the #1 smartphone from December 2012 to February 2013 with a 39% share.
- Over 30,000 companies are creating their own iPhone apps to be used by their employees.
- Apple sold 19.5 million iPads in the quarter. By my count, that means that as of March 30, 2013, Apple had sold over 140 million iPads.
- Cook said that iPads are now being used in 95% of businesses in the Fortune 500.
- Over 45 billion iOS apps have been downloaded. App developers have made over $9 billion in sales, and Apple is now paying developers over $1 billion every quarter. Oppenheimer said that 74% of all smartphone apps sold in the world during the last quarter were iOS apps.
- As always, Apple has some new cool products planned for later this year. Apple CEO Tim Cook said in a prepared statement: “We see great opportunities in front of us, particularly given the long-term prospects of the smartphone and tablet market, the strength of our incredible ecosystem which we’ve planned to continue to augment with new services, our plans for expanded distribution and the potential of exciting new product categories. … Our teams are hard at work on some amazing new hardware, software and services that we can’t wait to introduce this Fall and throughout 2014. … And of course, we have a tremendous culture of innovation with a relentless focus on making the world’s best products that change people’s lives. This is the same culture and company that brought the world the iPhone and the iPad and we’ve got a lot more surprises in the works.”
- Note that Cook did not just say new products, he said “new product categories,” which implies something brand new. Gene Munster — an analyst who asks almost every quarter whether Apple plans to start selling TVs — asked Cook to confirm that he had said that there would be a new product category. In response, Cook confirmed that “one of our areas for growth are potential new categories, and we’re very excited about those.”
- When will we see new products and new product categories? Cook’s prepared statement referred to the “Fall and throughout 2014” so an analyst asked whether that meant that Apple would not announce any new products before Fall of this year. Oppenheimer responded: “I don’t want to be more specific, but I’m just saying we’ve got some really great stuff coming in the Fall and across all of 2014.” That sort of sounds like a “yes” to me, but we’ll see.
- One analyst asked Tim Cook whether Apple is considering making an iPhone with a larger screen. Obviously, Apple is not going to spill the beans on any future product plans, but here is what Cook did say in response: “My view continues to be that iPhone 5 has the absolute best display in the industry. And we always strive to create the very best display for our customers. Some customers value large screen size, others value also other factors such as resolution, color quality, white balance, brightness, reflectivity, screen longevity, power consumption, portability, compatibility with apps, many things. Our competitors have made some significant trade-offs in many of these areas in order to ship a larger display. We would not ship a larger display iPhone while these trade-offs exist.” That’s an interesting answer because I don’t hear Cook saying no. I hear him saying that Apple won’t create an iPhone with a larger screen until the advantages outweigh the disadvantages, which of course could happen at any time in the future as technology advances. So maybe, in the future, we will see iPhones in more than one screen size, just like we now have both the iPad and the iPad mini.