Stock Talk

iOS 6 will be good for Apple... eventually

By Chris Umiastowski, Thursday, Sep 20, 2012 a 9:39 pm

Apple’s iOS 6 is now out, and if you've read iMore's detailed iOS 6 review you've already seen people complaining about the new Maps app. Whether it be incorrect data or simply a slew of features that are missing compared to the old, Google-powered Maps app.

Why the iPhone 5 is exactly what Apple and investors need it to be

By Chris Umiastowski, Thursday, Sep 13, 2012 a 3:25 pm

The financial markets are usually right. Not always, but usually. Today Apple stock is trading higher, following the iPhone 5 launch. It’s only 2 percent higher, but it tells you that most people were quite happy with what Apple announced, from a financial perspective.

Apple already revolutionized the smartphone market. They’ve revolutionized a few markets in their time on this planet. First they brought us the GUI and mouse. Then they created the iPod. Now they’ve brought multi-touch mobile computing to the masses. Let’s not debate who invented each particular item. In the end, execution is what matters. Apple is creative, smart, and executes well.

Should Apple fear Amazon?

By Chris Umiastowski, Friday, Sep 7, 2012 a 6:20 pm

On Thursday afternoon, Amazon’s Jeff Bezos got up on stage and introduced the world to an awesome set of updates to the Kindle Fire. Amazon doesn’t just want to have the best priced tablet (Kindle Fire is now $159), but it also wants to have the best tablet “at any price”.

To that end, the 8.9” Kindle Fire HD is hitting the market in November. It has great technical specs, and comes with a $299 price point (16 GB, Wi-Fi only) and a $499 price point, which includes 4G (LTE) and 32 GB of memory. That’s between $200 and $230 cheaper than a comparable iPad.

Can Apple keep setting new iPhone sales records?

By Chris Umiastowski, Wednesday, Aug 29, 2012 a 2:11 pm

In a few short weeks, the iPhone 5 should be upon us. One of the interesting metrics that has been talked about of the iPhone is how all new models effectively outsell the cumulative total of prior models. For example, the iPhone 4 sold more than the total of all original iPhone, 3G, and 3G models.

So far the iPhone 4S has not yet reached this goal, but it will by the time next quarter’s results are reported. By my estimate, after 3 quarters of sales, Apple has sold about 83 million of the iPhone 4S compared to 88 million of the iPhone 4.

Here’s a chart showing how many of each iPhone model Apple has sold to date. The totals add up to Apple’s reported numbers, but the splits are based on an educated guess. My assumption is that when a new model is released, the vast majority of shipments are for the new model. Not really rocket science.

Will Apple soon be worth one trillion dollars?

By Chris Umiastowski, Wednesday, Aug 22, 2012 a 12:16 pm

The value of a company is whatever people are willing to pay for it. And for public companies like Apple, that value equates to an open market stock price times however many shares there are in existence. Street lingo for this is market capitalization, or simply “market cap”.

Apple is the world’s most valuable company. Period. Not just among technology companies, but among all companies in the world. Apple is worth a staggering $624 billion as I write this paragraph. It’s stock price is hovering around $673 and since there are 937 million shares outstanding, multiplying those two numbers together gives us that immense market cap.

To hit a $1 trillion market cap, the stock price needs to climb to $1067, which is 59% higher than today’s price. Of course, one trillion dollars is an arbitrary number. But lots of public companies are worth over $100 billion, and the next zero to be added gets you to a trillion. So it’s psychologically important. Will Apple be the first company to achieve it?

Making dollars and sense of Apple’s enormous share of mobile computing profits

By Chris Umiastowski, Thursday, Aug 9, 2012 a 2:08 pm

For the last few years, industry pundits have been reporting on the surprising gap between Apple’s share of shipments compared to its share of profits. Investors care more about profits than market share.

On Monday of this week, John Paczkowski of AllThingsD wrote another one of these stories, quoting a report from analyst Tavis McCourt of Raymond James. Tavis is a sell-side analyst, and we’ve met many times at various trade shows and analyst events. I think he’s a smart guy, so I am happy to pay attention to stuff that he writes. And it does raise a really interesting question...

Apple reports Q3 and Wall Street freaks out in another display of short term memory

By Chris Umiastowski, Wednesday, Jul 25, 2012 a 1:52 am

Last night Apple reported Q3 fiscal 2012 earnings. If you look at some of the headlines floating around, you’d think Apple was in some kind of trouble. Phrases like “iPhone slump” and “big earnings miss” are being tossed around as if the sky is falling on Cupertino.

What a joke. I think this just proves how short term Wall Street’s memory can be. And I’ll get to that in a bit. For now, let’s go through the basic numbers to understand what all the fuss is about.

What Samsung's rise and Nokia's fall means for Apple and the iPhone

By Chris Umiastowski, Thursday, May 17, 2012 a 4:51 pm

Industry research firm Gartner just released its latest data on mobile phone sales for the first quarter of 2012. There are some interesting points to be pulled out of this report that I wanted to address.

Stellar Q2 2012 highlights why Apple is a must-own tech stock

By Chris Umiastowski, Wednesday, Apr 25, 2012 a 8:29 am

Apple'S Q2 2012 results weren't quite as strong as last quarter’s (the holiday period), but year-over-year it was another set of records for Apple.

Juicing the Apple: On dividends and stock buy backs

By Chris Umiastowski, Monday, Mar 19, 2012 a 11:32 am

Apple lays out $45 billion, 3 year strategy to attract new investors and neutralize dilution

As expected, and hinted at by Apple CEO Tim Cook, Apple announced the start of a regular quarterly dividend this morning. They also announced intentions to buy back stock, although the dividend is the bigger news, and drew more questions from analysts on the call.