Aside from the glowing results of the last fiscal quarter of 2014 for Apple, there were some interesting highlights from yesterday’s quarterly results conference call. Besides the highlights regarding the sensational Mac units and growth we have duly noted and discussed in this report here, there were quite of few gold nuggets worth discussing further.
New Line-Item Breakouts for 2015
Tim Cook stated that starting in 2015 the company will be reporting its revenue differently. There will be five major revenue line items in its quarterly results that include: iPhone, iPad, Mac, Services and Other Products.
Currently Apple’s biggest revenue line is the iPhone. iPad and Mac will continue to be separately reported. Services as a group will include, says Apple, iTunes, all Apple software and services (think iCloud storage services), licensing and other services and importantly the new ApplePay.
Apple says Other Products will include: Accessories, Beats, AppleTV, peripherals and accessories, iPod and the new AppleWatch.
01 – The new Retina iMac packs an impressive array of hardware internals, most especially the world’s fastest ‘single-threaded’ CPU, ideal for many of the world’s leading Pro apps used by creative and technical professionals.
Analysts questioned this new arrangement with particular focus on the AppleWatch move. Cook stated that putting AppleWatch in a group was not a comment on Apple’s view of how well the company thinks or fears the new product line will do, but a defensive move against competitors. Cook noted that Apple’s competitors are going to be “looking for that” and aggregating those numbers inside that particular group is quite helpful for Apple in making it very difficult for competitors to find those numbers with any degree of confidence.
New Geo View for Apple Stores and Foreign Growth
Apple will now breakout revenue for Apple Stores across the following regions: Americas, Europe, Greater China, Japan and the rest of Asia. Apple will continue to expand its store openings worldwide as well as upgrade several storages as well.
In terms of growth Cook stated that BRICs countries are “growing big for Apple…” BRIC’s stands for Brazil, Russia, India, China, which collectively are grouped together for geo-economic reasons as these countries are all at the same level of economic development. BRICs countries account for 40 percent of the world’s population but only about one quarter of the world’s GDP. Some view BRICs countries as overtaking the G7 leading industrial nations in economic output by mid-century. Apple’s growth in those markets is growing and significant and as BRICs nations rise in economic power so does Apple’s abilities to grow its income.
The Cone of Silence
An analyst tried to get Tim Cook to reference out and explain a comment he made earlier in the year where he commented that Apple was working on stuff that nobody had even rumored about yet—entirely new areas of development. Cook wouldn’t elaborate on this and stated that kind of info would remain in a “cone of silence” but importantly the company is fortunate because they “have a lot of creative people who want to change the world.” Cook was enthusiastic about Apple’s future and 2015.
And on that last note, Cook explained that he’s bullish on the iPad due to the new enterprise partnership between Apple and IBM. He also stated that one a month the first fruits of that partnership will bear witness to the market.