World of Apple

During today’s financial conference call, Apple’s chief financial officer Peter Oppenheimer noted that Apple will make a “product transition” during the next quarter.

The comment came after concerns that Apple predicted gross margins of just 30% down from 34.8% in the June quarter. According to Apple a future product transition will cause a drop in gross margins.

The chief was short on details but did explain that price will be a significant driving factor. He continued that Apple often introduces products with new technology at a high price, but seeks to drive the price lower over time.

When referring to the unnamed product the CFO described the product as having “technologies and features that others can’t match”.

In today’s press release Steve Jobs spoke of “several more wonderful new products”.

Apple is widely expected to be revising the MacBook Pro and MacBook in the coming quarter. In addition the company is rumoured to introducing a multi-touch tablet sometime in the future.

Apple today announced their third quarter 2008 financial results posting revenue of $7.46 billion and net quarterly profit of $1.07 billion (or $1.19 per diluted share).

Apple also held a conference call covering the details of the quarter as well as answering questions from analysts.

Notes from Conference Call

• Highest June quarter earnings in Apple’s history
• Highest quarterly Mac shipments in Apple’s history
• 38% growth in revenue year-over-year
• 11 million iPods sold, up 12% year-over-year
• iPhone 3G off to great start, 1 millionth iPhone sold in just 3 days, available in 22 countries
• Over 900 applications on App Store, 20% free, 90% under $10. Over 25 million apps downloaded so far
• iTunes now offers 8 million songs, 20,000 TV shows, and 2,200 movies, with 450 of those movies offered in HD
• 476,000 Macs sold via retail stores, over half sold to customers new to Mac
• 216 retails stores around the world at the end of quarter, stores coming to Switzerland and Germany in coming months
• Expect to sell more iPhones in Q408 than any other quarter
• Gross Margin expected to be down to 31% in September quarter, in part because of new product introduction, no further details available

Question and Answer Session Highlights

• Beijing Apple store doing very well already
• 170 Best Buy stores added in quarter. Total of 570 currently, 600 by the end of the Summer
• Steve Jobs has no plans to leave Apple and his health is a private matter
• Apple continues to invest in Apple TV, even though it remains a “hobby”
• iPhone 3G sold out due to overwhelming demand. Pleased with production ramp, trying to catch the demand by shipping units as fast as they can
• iPhone 3G launching in additional 20 countries on August 22
• Reiterated that Apple will introduce state of the art new product at prices their competitors can’t match
• App store not a huge revenue generator, instead makes the iPhone and iPod touch more attractive

AppleInsider reports that QuickLook will be making its way to Finder icons themselves in Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard.

The detail which was revealed to the site by a person familiar with the future Mac OS X release. The site writes that hovering the mouse pointer over an audio file in Snow Leopard’s Finder will trigger a triangular ‘play’ button to appear on the icon. Hitting the button will trigger the audio to play without opening any applications.

The process also works for video files.

AppleInsider reports that other files such as Pages, Keynote and Number files also cause the Finder to show navigation buttons on its icon to allow navigation of the document.

Apple today announced financial results for its fiscal 2008 third quarter ended June 28, 2008. The Company posted revenue of $7.46 billion and net quarterly profit of $1.07 billion, or $1.19 per diluted share. These results compare to revenue of $5.41 billion and net quarterly profit of $818 million, or $.92 per diluted share, in the year-ago quarter. Gross margin was 34.8 percent, down from 36.9 percent in the year-ago quarter. International sales accounted for 42 percent of the quarter’s revenue.

Apple shipped 2,496,000 Macintosh computers during the quarter, representing 41 percent unit growth and 43 percent revenue growth over the year-ago quarter. The Company sold 11,011,000 iPods during the quarter, representing 12 percent unit growth and seven percent revenue growth over the year-ago quarter. Quarterly iPhone units sold were 717,000 compared to 270,000 in the year-ago-quarter.

“We’re proud to report the best June quarter for both revenue and earnings in Apple’s history,” said Steve Jobs, Apple’s CEO. “We set a new record for Mac sales, we think we have a real winner with our new iPhone 3G, and we’re busy finishing several more wonderful new products to launch in the coming months.”

“We’re extremely pleased with the growth of our business and the generation of almost $5.4 billion in cash in the first three quarters of fiscal 2008,” said Peter Oppenheimer, Apple’s CFO. “Looking ahead to the fourth quarter of fiscal 2008, we expect revenue of about $7.8 billion and earnings per diluted share of about $1.00.”

Apple will be live streaming its Q3 2008 financial results. The live webcast will begin at 2:00 p.m. PDT on Monday, July 21, 2008 at www.apple.com/quicktime/qtv/earningsq308/

According to MobileMe’s support site around 1% of users are unable to access MobileMe mail, according to some the outage has lasted for around 4 days.

CNN Money is also reporting the issues:

The Cupertino, Calif., company has been migrating its .Mac pay email service to an upgraded version, called MobileMe. But in doing so, it has run into problems including service outages and customers losing access to their accounts. It’s the latest in a string of issues that have cropped up since the launch of the latest iPhone, an unusual turn for a company known for its attention to detail in its products and services.

The launch of MobileMe has been tarnished by a poor initial rollout and slow response in the past couple of weeks.

Within the next few hours Apple will unveil its third-quarter results and many analyst are expecting a strong performance from the company despite poor results from industry giants such as Microsoft and Google.

On average analysts appear to be reporting that Apple will earn $1.07 a share on $7.36 billion in sales, up from 92 cents a share on $5.41 billion in revenue during the same period a year ago. Apple itself has said it expects to earn $1 a share on $7.2 billion in revenue.

Gene Munster of Piper Jaffray has recently stated in a research note that Mac sales will be “the key to the quarter,” and that he expects Apple to report Mac sales of 2.35 million units during the quarter.

Andy Zaky of Bullish Cross, a blog on Apple’s financial dealings expects Apple to report $1.20 in EPS on $7.720 billion in revenue along with sales of 2.54 million Macs, 10.5 million iPods and 700,000 iPhones in the quarter.

Apple is set to open its newest Apple store in Leicester on September 4 this year.

The store which will reportedly take up 577 square metres will be located in the Highcross shopping development in Leicester, UK.

Apple is continues recruiting staff for stores in Liverpool, Belfast, Bristol and White City, London.