Apple (AAPL) certainly lived up to its tight-lipped reputation on yesterday’s earnings call. But the company, which also has a reputation for making shiny, brilliant and expensive products, didn’t need to talk much, not with the numbers it delivered in its earnings report.
Not much was said on the call about CEO Steve Jobs’ health, other than he’s still scheduled to return in June. And the company continued to talk down netbooks, with COO Tim Cook saying “it’s not a space - as it exists today - that we’re interested in.”
Releasing as few details as possible is “just the way Apple execs like their earnings calls,” Peter Kafka writes at MediaMemo.
Despite Cook’s claims that he’s not interested in netbooks, Kafka says don’t expect rumors of a new Apple tablet in the future to die down.
“Cook’s dismissal of the netbook market will continue to spark speculation that the company is readying something that sits in between a laptop and an iPhone,” Kafka says.
Apple’s 2Q net income rose 15% as the App store was the “key driver” behind the above-expectation iPod Touch and iPhone sales, Thomas Weisel says. So far, 37M App Store-compatible iPhone/iPod Touch devices have been sold, leading to a billion app downloads in just nine months.
“The impressive array of free and paid applications,” which Weisel estimates at 35,000 apps, “is driving loyalty and an unrivaled draw to the iPhone” platform. Firm expects AAPL’s App store to remain a strong growth driver for AAPL hardware through 2010.
Apple’s 2Q results and growing iPhone production should also help its chip suppliers, like Broadcom (BRCM), Marvell (MRVL), Nvidia (NVDA) and others, FBR Capital says.
AAPL will likely boost production of iPhones 110% ahead of the summer launch of iPhone 3.0, firm says, noting most suppliers for the new version haven’t changed. Apple’s comments that inventory oversupply has abated is also seen as a positive for the chip sector.
Apple shares - already up 55% since Jan. 20 - up 3.6% at $125.90 in recent trading.
(George Stahl and Jerry DiColo contributed to this report.)
June 17, 2009
[...] quite famous for being tight-lipped about any internal going’s on, to the point where secrecy is so rife, the separate hardware and software teams working on the [...]