World of Apple

Apple’s quarterly revenue estimate for the first fiscal quarter of 2013

You may recall that almost exactly one year ago I wrote a piece entitled The Forty Billion Dollar Quarter in which I riled in excitement about Apple’s upcoming announcement of what it had achieved in the previous fiscal quarter. I predicted dropped jaws across Wall Street and I wasn’t wrong. Apple eventually announced quarterly revenue for the first quarter of 2012 of just over $46 billion buoyed primarily by superb sales of the iPhone and iPad.

The first fiscal quarter of Apple’s year is always something special, it of course includes the holiday shopping season which these days stretches from around Thanksgiving in the US all the way up until the end of the quarter on December 31. But even if you go back and read my gushing piece about last years first quarter, nothing can prepare any of us for what Apple is likely to announce on January 23.

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Steve Ballmer demos some Windows 8 devices | Image courtesy of Microsoft

A few weeks back Microsoft CEO and chief ass Steve Ballmer was asked in an interview with the Wall Street Journal if he’d like Microsoft to evolve to Apple’s business model, that is to say would Microsoft enjoy being in control of both software and hardware? In response Ballmer said that “[i]n every category Apple competes, it’s the low-volume player, except in tablets,” adding that “In the PC market, obviously the advantage of diversity has mattered since 90-something percent of PCs that get sold are Windows PCs. We’ll see what winds up mattering in tablets.”

To even the most casual of Apple watchers it would be obscene to believe that Apple is a “low-volume” player in the smartphone market, MP3 market or even arguably in the hardware side of the PC market.

So what led Ballmer to label Apple has as a low-volume player, apart from the fact that he is completely unable to see or predict an industry trend through the mind warping success of Microsoft’s recent endeavours. Is this just a defensive quip from Ballmer as he faces the pressure of a number of failing ventures into the post-PC and smartphone markets?

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Moscone West in San Francisco adorned for Apple's Worldwide Developers Conference

Apple’s Worldwide Developers Conference is approaching quickly and unlike last year it looks like Apple might put on more than a software only show. Equally exciting for 2012 is that in the six months that have passed Apple has released and updated relatively few products. Particularly notable for the six months that have made up 2012 so far is that not a single model of Mac has been refreshed. We know that Apple has a particular dislike for releasing new hardware in August and after late October which leaves only a few months for a whole bunch of products to be crammed into.

Macs which have so far been completely void of any changes and many of which haven’t been touched for almost 12 months or more will likely be changed ahead of the “back to school” period which usually runs during June and July. Such a release timeframe could coincide nicely with the release of OS X Mountain Lion pinned by Apple for “late summer”.

It is possible to say with confidence that neither the iPhone nor the iPad will see any sort of hardware change announced during the WWDC keynote on Monday. Both of Apple’s leading products are firmly set in predictable cycles—iPad in March and iPhone in October for those slow off the mark.

The problem with such a high number of potential announcements is that it becomes difficult to make accurate predictions for WWDC which has in recent history focused more on developers than consumers, certainly since the iPhone moved to a Fall refresh in 2010.

But as Apple has indicated in its WWDC 2012 material the upcoming week is the one “we’ve all been waiting for”. So let’s take a look at the likely candidates for next weeks keynote.

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iPad with Ultrafast 4G LTE on Apple's US website

Outside of the United States Apple has been making headlines that aren’t exactly positive and it’s all surrounding how the company has chosen to advertise the new iPad. As is common knowledge these days Apple took the bold step to include LTE connectivity in its latest iPad model as one of the major features. Ahead of the iPad release I shot down the chances of Apple including LTE, stating primarily a lack of international adoption as a key reason for Apple to wait a year. I later relented and suspected it was inevitable.

However, LTE in the iPad is seemingly causing Apple more headaches than they would have envisaged and since before the iPad was even announced has been a point of frustration for myself and many others. This breaks into two simple ideas, the first idea being that LTE actually constitutes as true 4G connectivity and second the reason as to why Apple hobbled the iPad internationally?

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Walter Isaacson speaks at The Royal Institution in London

In a most auspicious setting Walter Isaacson took to the floor last night to talk about his 2011 biography of Steve Jobs. Having visited Amsterdam and Oxford this week on a whistle stop tour promoting the book it was particularly notable that Isaacson’s visit to London found him in a location that is special for all sorts of reasons but particularly in reference to science of which Isaacson’s past biography subjects include Einstein and Franklin.

Taking place in the famed lecture theatre of The Royal Institution in Mayfair, Isaacson set off the session retelling much of what is present in the biography of Jobs that was released not long after his death in October 2011. Mercurial is a word that pops up a lot when trying to create a summary of Jobs but according to Isaacson Jobs was a fan of the word.

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Walt and Steve enjoying their interview at D5 in 2007 | Photo by: Asa Mathat

It’s impossible to avoid using the term “post Jobs-era” but this week has proved more than any that with Tim Cook at the helm Apple is a changing company, and I believe changing for the better.

It’s no secret, Steve Jobs despised journalists unless of course he needed their help. As Apple grew, working with the press became less of a priority. Apple’s publicity is a self-perpetuating machine fed by hundreds upon hundreds of blogs posting emphatically about the latest Apple product announcement. Apple’s requirement for the press has diminished yet the media interest has grown. Anyone who has ever wanted to or attempted to contact an Apple PR representative knows the struggle required to get a response, in the majority cases you simply won’t get one.

The strategy of Apple’s PR team is to keep the feed of information as tightly scripted as possible, even when vice presidents are given an interview with a journalist they must stay on topic—that’s both the journalist and Apple VP (remember this Phil Schiller and Ben Cohen interview?). When the information isn’t coming directly from Apple then expectations are bound to get blown out of proportion and that’s a dangerous game.

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iBooks Textbooks Category on iBookstore

Apple’s education-focused event held today in the Guggenheim Museum in New York City is over and it’s now time to take stock of what the company announced. What we saw today was almost exactly as we expected, some of the more nuanced details such as application names and such were off the mark but beyond that we saw nothing we didn’t expect and got everything we did.

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Alex Brooks artistically illuminated by an iPad | Photo by Merry Phillips

There’s no easy way to say it, 2011 was a bad year for this website. Such a statement isn’t easy for me to write because it isn’t easy for me to hear; in July World of Apple will be seven years old and anyone who has ever run a website will know that it’s not all dissimilar to bringing up a child. And this child is now at the ripe old age of seven. What follows is a short reflection of those seven years, the lessons learned and the experience garnered and a hopeful punt at where I’m heading.

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On the very last day of 2011 Apple’s first fiscal quarter of 2012 ended and what happened during the preceding three months will drop jaws across Wall Street. Unlike previous years the quarter ran for 14 weeks rather than 13, this is something that happens every six years to align the fiscal periods with the December calendar. Six years ago this extra week of product sales wouldn’t have been notable, this time it should be taken into account (little reminder for the analysts amongst you).

Apple will report the results of its first quarter on January 24 and expect the news to be incredibly impressive. Those with even a basic knowledge of Apple’s business will know that its first quarter is always the most profitable driven by strong sales ahead of the holiday shopping season which kicks off in early November and runs right through until the end of December. The products that Apple makes are massive holiday sellers and the iPhone and iPad were sure to have been unwrapped in there millions across the world.

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2011 was a truly momentous year for Apple in many ways, during the year that has just passed the company released an unprecedented number of products in terms of both hardware and software cementing its place as the world’s most popular consumer electronics company. Apple also continued to rake in huge profits, at times climbing to be the most valuable public trading company in the United States.

Apple also suffered personnel changes with the loss of a number of key members of senior management, most notably Bertrand Serlet earlier in the year and Ron Johnson towards the end, both of these departures were of course hugely outweighed by the death of co-ounder and CEO Steve Jobs in October.

To mark such a great year for Apple I’m going to recap a number of key events with a series of images, so let’s start right at the beginning of the year.

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