Apple reports Q2 2023 results
apple.com
apple.com
Mass WFH created unprecedented demand for desktop computers. Now sales are returning closer to the norm.
It could be more like inflation is impacting Mac sales regardless.
It's not clear whether consumers do or even should distinguish between M1 and M2.
> Also no follow up to the Mac Pro at all.
Mac Pro sales have always been tiny portion of Mac sales and have very little effect on the big picture.
The point being if you bought the M1 during the pandemic, you now have little reason to upgrade despite it being a 2020 processor in 2023.
Only processor transitions such as PowerPC to Intel and Intel to Apple Silicon give a good reason to upgrade within a few years.
But there are more than just instruction set transitions. The difference between the Pentium 4 and Core 2 or Bulldozer and Zen were stark.
Even the Ryzen 7000 series has AVX-512, DDR5, PCIe 5.0 etc. It's frequently twice as fast as the 3000 series from 3 years earlier. The M2 isn't that kind of thing.
(Edit: buyout -> trade-in)
Upgrade cycles are more like 4-6+ years.
They’re honestly in a highly competitive industry, even considering their monopolistic practices. Their execution is really good.
Apple will be discussed in business classes for a long time after it inevitably is supplanted.
Even today, the m1 macbook air feels like a pretty good buy, taking into account the discount you can get on them.
Probably doesn't make a huge difference to Apples bottom line, though.
54%
https://sixcolors.com/post/2023/05/apple-q2-2023-results-94-...
Why not? I imagine people using macOS are likelier to use iPhones. And then AirPods. And then Apple Watches. And monthly recurring revenue like Apple One bundles or iCloud Drive.
Having an additional entry point other than iPhone and iPad into the ecosystem must be very beneficial, especially when it is as no brainer as an M1 MacBook Air for so many people's use case.
BTW, Today I experienced a "Your system has run out of application memory" [1] in the Pro with the same usage that I give to the Air. Have not time to investigate further.
Apple was one of the few company releasing actual sales (they have a no stock model) while other relased shipments (unit are shipped but could be returned if not ultimately sold).
Since they stopped releasing this metric butchered analyses about market share comparing shipments vs sales almost totally stopped. It sad because units sold was a nice metric, but it was a smart move to fight bullshit.
Now imagine if Apple wanted to use 1/3 of its net income to create a private military at the edge of technology.
I loved that thing.
Fear will keep the shareholders in line.
Most of software devs wouldn’t like to work on military tech. Not saying there are no smart people at Lockheed or Raytheon but I would argue there is less smart people willing to work for this types of companies.
Even if devs hate ads most would rather work on ad-tech than mil-tech.
For compensation I also believe that weapon manufacturers pay high salaries already as well.
So I might be wrong but from my point of view as software dev - Apple is not producing actual weapons to be the only difference.
Money is just money, having a ton of it doesn't mean you can actually use it for what you want.
Netflix was 8.18B the same quarter. Spotify was 3.17 Peloton was 0.8 Dropbox was 0.6
Edit: people pointed out the App Store might be included too. Which I see google play at something like 10B last quarter
That means Apple is doing the same in services as all their biggest competitors combined for stuff that comes under services.
I’m sure I’m leaving off stuff , like there are probably better services to pick in each, but still truly insane numbers.
Even crazier because outside of Apple TV+, I barely ever hear people using Apple services. TV+still doesn’t have the content quantity and range to compete with Netflix either.
2) Everything else
That’s still impressive for Apple given everything totalled from their top competitors is roughly equal to their own services.
I believe Google's special deal with Apple to be the default search engine in Safari is a part of services revenue.
For all folks just as confused as me
I get it, this is an intellectual place, but Q2 2023 was confusing for me as a non finance bro
You can separate eras in human history by the the dramatic jumps in the amount of people that can be fed by a set amount of human labour.
[1] https://gs.statcounter.com/ios-version-market-share/all/unit...
In many cases, they're not 'perfectly good'. Apple does backwards compatibility longer than most, but at some point, those old phones can't function as smart phones. Banking and health apps will require newer OS, and newer OS eventually means new device (for better or worse).
I just bought a 'new' iphone - used/refurb. Tru-depth camera broke. Replaced it ($170!). Whole phone broke a week after that anyway, out of warranty, and ... they offered to sell me a replacement for $399 (iphone 12 mini). I bought a refurb 13 mini from a 3rd party for $420, then got a $35 refund for minor cosmetic damage. That doesn't count in Apple's numbers, but I almost did. My 2.5 year old iphone mini wasn't "perfectly good" any more.
Also, for better or worse, people have multiple. Your employer may provide you with a work phone, and you'll have 2. It's not as prevalent as it used to be, but I still know a few folks who have a 'work' phone separate from personal.
It's still a lot of phones, no doubt. I don't plan to replace/upgrade mine for at least another 2 years, but my wife may need a new one should something happen to her iphone 11 in the next couple years.
To add to this, each annual release of iOS does typically add a new feature or two that works only on the newest model(s). Sometimes, this is enough to generate an upgrade.
There's also a large amount of people that essentially "rent" their phone through a consistent upgrade pipeline via their carrier or Apple directly (basically never paying off the device directly).
I am in no way saying the results are not correct. But there are all kinds of smart ways to report revenue, like mandating your suppliers to stock your product and reporting those as sales.Same way car vendors report sales, when the cars in reality are still sitting at the dealers showrooms.
From my random data sample of 20 contacts, around 80% have Android phones and the other 20% with iPhones, nobody upgraded in the last two years...
"How long do iPhone users take to upgrade their device?" - https://www.phonearena.com/news/How-long-do-iPhone-users-tak....
1. It continues to be true that a new phone is noticeably faster and has a noticeably better camera than a 3-year-old phone (regardless of how gross the reasons are).
2. Phones break.
3. Phones are lost.
4. Phones are given away.
5. Some batteries in the batch lose capacity faster than they should.
6. New phones are given as gifts to people who might have gone longer before buying a new phone with their own money.
7. Features.
Even regardless of all that, three doesn't seem unreasonable if you have the money. I seem to be able to go about five years before the battery life and performance become too painful (though it's hard to get an average with data points that far apart), and my tolerance for those issues is probably higher than a normal person.
At a replacement rate of 200 million per year, that’s 5 years to turn over the iPhone active install base. Replacing a 5 year old phone sounds pretty reasonable.
Earnings call transcript: https://sixcolors.com/post/2023/05/this-is-tim-apples-q2-202...
“The iPhone base is well over a billion active devices.”
It has saved more lives than any other invention.
Thousands of times more (not an exaggeration) than the Polio vaccine and Penicillin combined -- and is largely credited for the making cities less deadly and allowing Babylon to exist (and have so many other advances for humanity)