Apple reports first quarter results
apple.com
apple.com
Given that, I'm assuming that EPS would have to be up 7.7% just to break even.
If there were exactly 52 weeks in a solar year, you could do 13 week quarters. There are 52 weeks and 1 day. So every few years you need a leap week to catch back up with the solar year. The reason to do this as 1 week every seven years and not one leap day is that you have weekly seasonality and keeping a round number of weeks makes quarters more comparable.
But note that this quarter was 13 weeks, it was last year's that was 14, which is probably why the financials dont mention it?
In fiscal year 2024, Apple's first quarter ran from Sunday Oct 1 through Saturday Dec 30. That's 13 full 7-day weeks.
They're just setting the beginning and ending of their quarters such that they only include full Sunday through Saturday weeks.
If I had to guess, their first quarter in FY2025 will run from Sept 30 through Jan 3 and be 14 weeks.
If all years were 365 days, the extra week will come once every 7 years.
But we have leap years, so the extra week comes either after 5 years (which includes 2 leap years) or after 6 years (which includes 1 leap year) ... or something like that, so I guess the first quarter in fiscal 2028-29 will have this feature ... could be 2027 as I do not how to count this too precisely, but definitely not before.
I really don’t think that this has anything to do with leap years or even the normal number of days in the year. It looks like they’ve decided that all of their quarters start on a Sunday and they choose a Sunday that puts the first day of the (quarter) month in that week, unless the first day is after Wednesday (???) in which case they use the next week.
It’s odd; I’ve never seen anything like that. But I’m pretty sure that as long as it’s “reasonable” and they are consistent about it, the SEC/IRS doesn’t care.
If I were to guess as to why they’d do something like this, it would be that they run weekly financial reports on Sundays so the executives can look at them Monday morning. And their quarterly reports are aggregations of the weekly reports. But who knows!
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Week#/media/File:First_Day_of_...
If all years were 364 days this will never be an issue since there will not be an extra day.
When a year is 365 days there is an extra day and the next years calendar starts on a day adjacent to previous year. Note that I am talking about calendar year not fiscal year.
So if all years were leap years, calendar would get in balance after 7 years and after adjusting for 1 week in the fiscal year.
But not all years are 365 days so sometimes the calendar shifts by 1 day and sometimes by 2 days. So whether the calendar gets into balance varies depending on where the leap year are with respect to when the calendar is adjusted. As my parent comment said, the last adjustment was in 23, it is not easy to say whether the next adjustment will be after 5 years or 6 years without looking at how many days get added year by year. It will definitely not be 7 years.
For arguments sake, adjust the fiscal calendar in January 1st. If you did that in 2024, that right there is a leap year, so you gain / lose 2 days, then 1 day each in 25, 26, 27, and then 2 days in 2028. Net 7 days so you adjust calendar in 2029 - 5 years later. But now the calendar has started in 2029, so adjust 1 day in 29, 30, and 31, even 2 days in 32, even 1 each in 33 and 34. So you adjust after 6 years. There are more options too but not worth analyzing each.
If the Vision Pro has any chance of going places, it would be foolish to not put as much steam as possible behind it. At worse it's just a product that will be remembered as Apple being inventive.
I can’t imagine them ever moving enough units to recover those costs.
I feel like phones and even watches are pretty "solved" at this point (witness every discussion around the incremental updates in a new iPhone), which is great.
I'm excited there's potentially a new product category here where there's still a lot of unsolved questions. The form factor will certainly change, and the UX idioms will as well. I look forward to seeing it. I'm interested in the Quests, too, but Apple does have a little magic sometimes and are exploring a bit of a different direction. Exciting times.
Like the others in this thread, I'm happy to see Apple investing in truly new, risky ventures. That's real innovation, and I hope they keep that up.
I'm curious to know about folding devices (as a category?) and if they're going to go anywhere. Would probably depend on the developments in flexible screens.
With Large Multimodal Models coming online now, it really seems like that Meta product has a lot of room to grow.
Recognizing the world around you, and giving you very intelligent audio feedback on it seems pretty darn useful. Especially in a form factor that people have already accepted out in the public. The LMM -> audio playback interface seems like a great way to get around the display issues for a sci-fi Google Glass.
But I suppose Apple will likely be later to market in that space as well, with an even more perfect product. That's assuming they can go from Siri to leading edge LMM.
Long term, when the tech is there to do that, sure.
2017:
> Apple CEO Tim Cook said that it will be a while before the technology available for augmented reality glasses rises to Apple’s standards, according to British Vogue.
“There are rumours and gossip about companies working on that, and we obviously don’t talk about what we work on. But today I can tell you that the technology itself doesn’t exist to do that in a quality way,” Cook told Vogue.
https://www.cnbc.com/2017/10/11/apple-ar-glasses-tim-cook-sa...
They keep iterating on it in-house, and keep finding that the tech still isn't ready.
It’ll do fine.
Point of comparison: Steve Jobs started talking about the iPhone when someone asked him about the next big thing at the Macintosh premier in 1984. 10 years later, he was fired from Apple and working on bespoke workstations. 20 years later, Palm/Blackberry owned the smartphone market. 30 years later, Apple owned the smartphone market. These stories take time.
https://www.statista.com/topics/6072/extended-reality-xr/
https://www.futuremarketinsights.com/reports/ar-vr-software-...
Apple Watch was pretty mid, but people like watches and fitness bands, so it seemed to gain some traction.
These goggles required so much tech and research and also have a massive price tag for what is realistically a novelty and possibly small evolution over current work flows. It doesn’t feel like it will be bigger than Apple Watch.
And it turned out that the niche was in huge demand - everybody likes reading the news and chatting with friends on the go.
There were plenty of phones out there that could browse, email, take pictures etc, they just sucked and iphone sucked way less.
It remains to be seen whether the current goggles just suck or the whole concept is for geeks only (even with the geeks that own some kind of vr googles only 10% use them weekly or more often).
I bet there were similar reservations about the initial iPhone, too. CapEx spending to develop the Vision Pro will probably be spread out over years, in which Apple will undoubtedly release the Vision Pro 2, 3 etc..
I'm not an accountant or an R&D guy but the first version always costs the most, right? Improvements over the years cost less and less as the platform is more established, I would think (if all other costs remain relatively stable).
There were not.
The Vision Pro is none of that and they'll have to build the market (a non gaming ARish headset) by themselves.
Microsoft: “There’s no chance that the iPhone is going to get any significant market share. No chance."
Palm: “We've learned and struggled for a few years here figuring out how to make a decent phone,” Colligan said. “PC guys are not going to just figure this out. They're not going to just walk in.”
RIM: "in terms of a sort of a sea-change for BlackBerry, I would think that’s overstating it"
Nokia: “The development of mobile phones will be similar in PCs. Even with the Mac, Apple has attracted much attention at first, but they have still remained a niche manufacturer. That will be in mobile phones as well”
Same for watches.
Same for portable music players.
The same cannot be said for VR.
So they do believe they will ship enough units over the next few decades.
As for capex, Apple claims 5000 patents cover the Vision Pro so it must be unprecedented for them.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_mergers_and_acquisitio...
So definitely a lot of lawyers.
Meta already has a context aware glass product that is limited and flawed but also paves the way for a magic product 10 to 15 iterations down the line.
If we look at Apple's recent track record, we have the Apple Watch as a success, and Apple TV, HomePod as mostly living deads. Apple coming late to a market and crush it isn't the main pattern anymore IMHO.
EDIT: Ok, yes I should have just googled it. Apparently "services" is their code for media. Not like professional services. It's AppleTV, magazines, news and such.
Everything you cited are also part of it, but the bulk is games' in app payments.