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Comment by runako | Hacker News Reader

In context: Apple likely made more than $4.7B in revenue from its weekend iPhone launch.

If you do the math assuming Apple make's $400 a phone which may or may not be true, and the 9 million figure is correct. Then they made $3.6B however they probably made another 1B from accessories, warranties, apps, etc. So yah they probably did.

Less all expenses to launch, design, develop, manufacture, ship the current phones, they are at a good pace of getting a return on their investment. Don't look at it too linearly.

AAPL is current up 5.1% on the news of their weekend sales figures... Which is about $21bn in market extra market cap.

The fluctuation in market cap does not provide or withdraw financing from the company. The rise and fall of their shares is irrelevant and means that investors anticipate higher earnings and have therefore revalued the company. I don't see what you're getting at.

From my post:

"...in revenue"

The lowest-cost iPhone launched over the weekend is $549. So they likely didn't make as little as $400 in revenue on any new iPhone unit over the weekend. We don't know the aggregate carrier discount, but we do know that 1) the historical average ASP for iPhones is over $600, and 2) the just-launched lineup is roughly the same price as last year.

The cheapest phone that launched was $549 so your estimate is wildly off base. The average selling price was likely closer to $700.

Does the carrier subsidy count up front, or does it trickle in over time?

Getting very tangential here, but that question occurred to me and I don't know how it works.

They account for it over time ("subscription accounting), but I believe get it all at once. It's goofiness required for GAAP accounting IIRC. This is why carriers often post lousy numbers after a big launch even though it means a lot of future revenue--those $350 subsidies add up quickly.

That's pretty wacky. So from an accounting perspective, the money just disappears for a while? If the phone companies have to post the loss immediately but Apple posts the earnings over time....

Not saying you're wrong. The world of accounting is just odd sometimes.

It doesn't disappear, it's noted, but just not counted as received. It is wacky, but makes some amount of sense and makes revenue more even. It helps lessen the incentive to stack a quarter with revenue even though it starves the next quarter (someone else's problem).

It seems to relate with software updates being assumed:

http://appleinsider.com/articles/09/10/21/inside_apples_ipho...

> Based on research into what allowed this to happened, the Sarbanes-Oxley Act was instituted to require certain minimum standards of financial accountability. Among its many rules is a provision that states that companies can't immediately book revenue for a product if the complete product has not yet been fully delivered.

Appreciate the info, always nice to learn new things.

...and Motorola was sold to Google at ~$12.5B[1] at 2011.

[1] http://www.zdnet.com/blog/btl/googles-motorola-acquisition-n...

"brought in" would be more appropriate than made but yes

I think you're too quick to imply that I don't know the difference between "revenue" and "profit". :-)

Note my phrasing: "made ... in revenue". The word "revenue" means what you're implying with "brought in", which is the top-line number.

My apologies if I'm misinterpreting.

Correct me if I'm wrong but Apple is using QNX for iOS in the car...

http://www.apple.com/ios/whats-new/

Citation? I've heard that QNX is used in something like ~70% of automotive touchscreen systems. So maybe Apple just ported Cocoa to an existing QNX system? I kind of doubt it, but I would be very interested to read more.

Can't give you due to [...] (feel free to interpret that :)).

Not sure which one is harder: port just Cocoa (or even a minimum subset of Cocoa [or just the icons/layouts], the demo/screenshot doesn't look as rich as the total package of the latest iOS and it's still in the work) or retrofit iOS for cars?

Reading more, I see that iOS in the Car doesn't need to run iOS apps; it's "just" an iPhone dock with a touchscreen. :)

On the other hand, I'd rather have one Twitter than three BlackBerrys

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