A daily digest of IT news, curated from blogs, forums and news sites around the web each morning. We highlight the key commentary and demystify the real story.
Apple (AAPL) announced its Q3 results in a conference call with financial analysts yesterday. In IT Blogwatch, bloggers dissect the numbers.
By Richi Jennings: your humble blogwatcher, who selected these bloggy morsels for your enjoyment. Not to mention Error'd...
Eric Bangeman draws bar charts and stuff:
As expected by industry analysts, Apple posted third (fiscal) quarter earnings that breezed past the company's guidance of $0.95-1.00 per share. Buoyed by stronger-than-expected sales of its new iPhone 3GS, Apple reported profits of $1.35 per share on earnings of $8.34 billion. Both of those are up significantly from third quarter 2008 figures. ... Sequential growth was also solid, beating the second quarter.
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Apple's results in the middle of a recession are encouraging, especially given the high margins it typically enjoys. In fact, margins were 36.3 percent, a bit higher than the company's guidance of 33 percent, and higher than the third quarter of 2008's 34.8 percent. ... With CEO Steve Jobs back at the helm, a strong product lineup, and a growing core of satisfied customers, Apple is well-positioned for continued growth despite the tough economic times.
Zach Epstein plays the fanboi:
Analysts, investors and just about everyone else even the least bit interested in tech had very high expectations for Apples fiscal third quarter 2009, which ended on June 27th. Well folks, the numbers are in and to make a long story short Apple crushed it. In fact, the company has just reported its best non-holiday quarter in its storied history. Recession? Please.
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Were glad Stevie is back in action but theres absolutely no question that the rest of crew stayed on course during his absence.
Here's Peter Kafka, Esq.:[You're fired -Ed.]
This is now an Apple earnings-call tradition: Analysts try their hardest to convince Apple (AAPL) executives to express interest in the booming market for cheap netbooks and Apple executives make it perfectly clear how much disdain they have for netbooks. If thats the kind of thing that makes you happy, then you would love todays call, in which the exact same thing happened again. Twice.
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[But] Apple has a history of disparaging products and markets right before they unveil their own. So its not unreasonable for analysts to keep asking about the prospects for a supercheap Mac laptop. But Apple really is emphatic about its distaste for these machines.
The award for "most incomprehensible post" goes to... Steve Gillmor:
As realtime accelerates, streaming text and media services are much easier to leverage than slower ones such as RSS readers. Given the Flash blockade on the iPhone and Googles YouTube support for H.264, those services that make it easier to click directly on breaking news are rising in usage. At its simplest level, if I see a Flash icon, I avoid that service more and more. If I see a YouTube icon, I come back more and more, whether its on the iPhone or not.
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Desktop systems that play along will achieve momentum as well. Flash will suffer, Silverlight will not. Its the beginnings of a Betamax/VHS argument, and we know how that turned out.
Victor Godine unpicks the iPod numbers:
It's interesting to see how quickly the iPod is declining. Well, every iPod model except the Touch is declining.
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I think Apple might soon kill off at least the Classic and the Nano, replacing those two products with perhaps a single, entry-level iPod Touch, with the Shuffle staying around to mop up among bargain shoppers. ... If Apple can drop the price on the 8-gig Touch down to the same $149 price as the 8-gig Nano, then the Nano will be irrelevant to almost everyone..
MG Siegler points and laughs at Bono's new friend:
You know the beautiful thing: June 29, 2009, is the two- year anniversary of the first shipment of the iPhone, Elevation Partners (which owns a huge portion of Palm) co-founder Roger McNamee told Bloomberg in March. Not one of those people will still be using an iPhone a month later.
A week from tomorrow is the big day for McNamees prediction. Hows it looking? Not so hot. Okay, awful. ... The iPhone 3GS is selling very, very well (as was further evidenced today during Apples 3Q earnings call), the Palm Pre? Still pretty ho-hum. And things still seem to be slowing down.
Last word goes to Rik Myslewski:
No, Steve Jobs didn't participate in today's conference call. And none of the questioning analysts was impolitic - or spunky - enough to ask why.
Richi Jennings is an independent analyst/consultant, specializing in blogging, email, and spam. A 24 year, cross-functional IT veteran, he is also an analyst at Ferris Research. You can follow him as @richi on Twitter or richij on FriendFeed, pretend to be Richi's friend on Facebook, or just use good old email: itblogwatch@richij.com.
