Using their huge piles of cash to acquire of third party companies for their IP etc. is effectively hidden R&D spending. Not saying that raises the % significantly (don't know), but it's likely not counted here.
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Some days I feel like ditching Apple
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I am sure there are others that have a enormous amount of cash reserves. But the topic/thread is Apple so.....Well, I believe Apple has repurchased roughly $100B of it's stock since 2013--not exactly peanuts.But I'd agree about the cash reserves--can't see a clear reason why they still need over $200B in cash reserves.
And while Apple is the favorite whipping boy in this sub forum, if fingers are going to be pointed, let's be fair. Google (Alphabet) has roughly $70B in cash reserves (yes, not Apple big but enough to buy most companies themselves) and hasn't paid out any dividends over the past 5 years either.
Here is article speculating what Apple should/could do with its cash reserves.
They could buy:
Disney: Apple and The House of Mouse have been partners for years. So why not make it official? Disney's (DIS) current market value is $160 billion. The iPhone could be the official smartphone of Marvel's Avengers! Apple could design the latest light sabers for the next Star Wars movies, and a deal could help Apple in the digital content wars. Unless ...
- Amazon and Netflix: Apple could corner the market on streaming video by purchasing both Amazon (AMZN, Tech30) and Netflix (NFLX, Tech30). Amazon's market cap is $142.7 billion and Netflix is valued at a "mere" $27.1 billion. And maybe Apple would spin-off that whole money-losing e-commerce site Amazon runs.
- IBM: Big Blue has fallen on hard times lately. IBM (IBM, Tech30) is now worth $152 billion. But it is selling iPads to corporate customers. Why does Apple need a middleman? Plus, a marriage of IBM's Watson and Apple's Siri would be so cute. Nothing like artificial intelligence romance!
- Uber and Tesla: Rumors of an iCar pop up every now and then. So why not buy Tesla (TSLA) and Uber and issue Model S vehicles to all Uber drivers? Tesla's market value is $25 billion. Uber recently completed a round of financing that put a $40 billion price tag on it. Apple should strike fast though. At this rate, Uber will be worth more than $178 billion before you know it! #sarcasm
http://money.cnn.com/2015/01/28/investing/apple-cash-178-billion/index.html
God, Apple buying Disney wouldn't be successful at all. Apple has shown time and time again its greatest success is centered around its core brands.
Google definitely makes money, but their services are also mostly free (and are good).
And their devices usually sell at more affordable prices than Apple's. Far more affordable.
Jobs was majority shareholder when Pixar was sold to Disney.
Sure, but my comment was in response to jamezr's criticism of Apple not returning their profits to investors. If I'm a shareholder in both companies, I'm getting exactly the same return.
Sure, but my comment was in response to jamezr's criticism of Apple not returning their profits to investors. If I'm a shareholder in both companies, I'm getting exactly the same return.
Ah, got it.
While I tend to agree with you latter statement, I'm not so sure it it doesn't make some sense. Some of Apple's biggest struggles of late have been with content creation industry, specifically with Apple Music but to a greater extent, securing content for their stand alone streaming service. The easiest way for Apple to gain some leverage in these industries would be to produce content themselves and what easier way than purchasing one of the largest content creators/providers in the world. The library of material and property they would control would be huge.
Personally, I wouldn't want to see it happen either but I think it makes a decent amount of sense in some context, especially considering the amount of proverbial eggs they have in their hardware basket, specifically the iPhone. Some diversification, especially if it helps improve the content they provide, might not be a terrible idea.
Either way, I'd like to see them put that ridiculous surplus of cash to better use, or even dial back the margins a little bit so allow a larger pool of customers to have access to their products, though we know the latter has a snowball's chance in hell of actually happening.
Would you take a cut In salary so that more people can work in your company? While I don't support or condemn Apple for their profits, I wouldn't take a cut in pay so someone else can get hired.
What a rediculous analogy. . Doesn't make sense in the slightest. . You would have no Benefit from another employee. . Whereas apple would make less money up front, but if they sold more sets of a smaller profit, they would have in fact made more overall money.. primary skool economics. . 1 x 100 is less than 2 x 60.. jeez.
What you say makes no sense. They obviously priced there phones taking into account the service and whatever else they provide at that price point. As far as the analogy it makes perfect sense, if the company halved your salary they could hire two of you. If Apple halved the price according to you they would sell twice as more; but would have to provide the same level of service for twice the phones. The company who now hired two of you at half price probably has to deal with two junior people. The point is halving your pay.
Neither, Steve Jobs was on their board and pushed them to make Toy Story, their first ever feature length fully computer animated film. It was their dream and he helped them achieve it, not sure how many other films they then made before he went back to Apple.
He also planned to turn Pixar into a high end computer manufacture and tried to sell some systems they made, and he also sold his NeXt brand of computers to Apple.
Whatever you do in life, please God let it not be the teaching profession..
I feel like ditching Apple especially given their focus on form over function. They no longer make a 4 inch iPhone (well past the 5S) and the last worthwhile Macbook (for me) was the Mid 2012 non retina Macbook due to the expandability and ports. The only product Apple makes these days that I feel I could buy without all sorts of compromises is the iPad Air (though I'm waiting for the Air 3). Essentially I also feel as though iOS is getting worse despite promises the other way.
Truthfully iMessage keeps me on the iPhone... I love it and text forwarding/calls forwarding + find my friends way too much
Truthfully iMessage keeps me on the iPhone... I love it and text forwarding/calls forwarding + find my friends way too much
It is not as simple as this. This will mean that Apple would have to manufacture alot more phones. Who says Apple suppliers has that capacity? Also as someone mentioned, providing service for 120 million phones is harder than providing service for 100 million phones. Simple economics. Not only that, persons buying Apple devices use it as sort of a status symbol. If Apple devices are cheap then their devices will no longer be a status symbol.
I had to smile at your post, it seems at every turn I see exactly that happening. In the medical industry I see if often, laying off workers and replacing them with 2 or sometimes even 3 much cheaper workers with the strategy being to put more responsibility on the management. My wife, who is a bank manager, complains about this constantly in the banking industry as well. Off topic, but interesting.
It's amazing how quick it is to forget all the things I hated about iOS even after a mere 6 months or so of selling my iPhone 6.
App Store still doesn't allow you to download anything large without a WiFi connection. You gotta be kidding me. Ditto software updates. What if I have unlimited data or what if I just plain want the update or, in this case, the app and know I can spare the data, but can't get to WiFi anytime soon? I have to wait until I get to WiFi to download any game/app/update? This is "advanced"? This is living in the digital age? What...??
Let me make my own responsible decision.
About navigating back...
I have to re-iterate, it's insanely inconsistent. Even within Apple's core apps that employ the swipe-to-go-back feature. A lot of times, there just isn't the option to swipe back. You have to hit the "cancel" button and that can be upper left or upper right or sometimes somewhere else. For example, check out these screen grabs of Apple Maps. There's no way to swipe-back from this. Yet, here are two screens that show two different "cancel" locations. I genuinely thought the second one would have the cancel in the upper right and my thumb was already moving there, only to stop short to find it's a "Route" button instead. Cancel is now left.
Frustrating. And this happens all throughout iOS, even within Apple's core apps that have swipe-back enabled.
I've also forgotten how cumbersome it is to share things. Even these three screen grabs, I wanted to pull them off my phone. I go to the photo gallery and hit share. Can't find DropBox. Instead, I have to go into DropBox and pick upload from there. If I were to want to share to apps that Apple allows, then I could share from the photo gallery. But if I want to share to an app Apple doesn't allow, I have to go to that app and upload from there instead.
Another example of an inconsistent experience just because iOS is so rigid.
It just seems to take more work than necessary to accomplish most/many of the same tasks that is so easy to accomplish on Android. The aforementioned inability to access WiFi settings from Control Center, for example (last week, when I first got iPhone and wanted to connect to new WiFi networks, I kept forgetting CC doesn't actually take me to the WiFi selection. I had to go into Settings). At least the WiFi thing can be forgiven, but I like to share my photos often. Navigating backwards is used EXTREMELY often.
Also, is it me or does the OS not remember that I want to use Swype and not the iOS keyboard. It often seems to pop back up as the iOS keyboard. What gives? I've looked but I'm not sure how/if I have to somehow set it as default another way. Can someone advise? It also seems to me that the App Store doesn't trust that I absolutely want to use only my thumb print to approve purchases. Sometimes it'll say "For security purposes..." or something, they'll need me to punch in my Apple ID password again. What security purposes?! I specifically chose Touch ID to approve. I ask again, am I doing something wrong where my default preference isn't being properly saved? What is with all this inconsistency on iOS over basic features?
These (and other) inconsistencies make me thankful iOS isn't my daily driver anymore. It's maddening.
App Store still doesn't allow you to download anything large without a WiFi connection. You gotta be kidding me. Ditto software updates. What if I have unlimited data or what if I just plain want the update or, in this case, the app and know I can spare the data, but can't get to WiFi anytime soon? I have to wait until I get to WiFi to download any game/app/update? This is "advanced"? This is living in the digital age? What...??
Let me make my own responsible decision.
About navigating back...
I have to re-iterate, it's insanely inconsistent. Even within Apple's core apps that employ the swipe-to-go-back feature. A lot of times, there just isn't the option to swipe back. You have to hit the "cancel" button and that can be upper left or upper right or sometimes somewhere else. For example, check out these screen grabs of Apple Maps. There's no way to swipe-back from this. Yet, here are two screens that show two different "cancel" locations. I genuinely thought the second one would have the cancel in the upper right and my thumb was already moving there, only to stop short to find it's a "Route" button instead. Cancel is now left.
Frustrating. And this happens all throughout iOS, even within Apple's core apps that have swipe-back enabled.
I've also forgotten how cumbersome it is to share things. Even these three screen grabs, I wanted to pull them off my phone. I go to the photo gallery and hit share. Can't find DropBox. Instead, I have to go into DropBox and pick upload from there. If I were to want to share to apps that Apple allows, then I could share from the photo gallery. But if I want to share to an app Apple doesn't allow, I have to go to that app and upload from there instead.
Another example of an inconsistent experience just because iOS is so rigid.
It just seems to take more work than necessary to accomplish most/many of the same tasks that is so easy to accomplish on Android. The aforementioned inability to access WiFi settings from Control Center, for example (last week, when I first got iPhone and wanted to connect to new WiFi networks, I kept forgetting CC doesn't actually take me to the WiFi selection. I had to go into Settings). At least the WiFi thing can be forgiven, but I like to share my photos often. Navigating backwards is used EXTREMELY often.
Also, is it me or does the OS not remember that I want to use Swype and not the iOS keyboard. It often seems to pop back up as the iOS keyboard. What gives? I've looked but I'm not sure how/if I have to somehow set it as default another way. Can someone advise? It also seems to me that the App Store doesn't trust that I absolutely want to use only my thumb print to approve purchases. Sometimes it'll say "For security purposes..." or something, they'll need me to punch in my Apple ID password again. What security purposes?! I specifically chose Touch ID to approve. I ask again, am I doing something wrong where my default preference isn't being properly saved? What is with all this inconsistency on iOS over basic features?
These (and other) inconsistencies make me thankful iOS isn't my daily driver anymore. It's maddening.
after blackberry learning iOS muscle memory was difficult. I finally got the hang of it with the 5s. With the difference in keyboard sizes in the 6s I'm still getting used to the new keyboard size vs the 5s.
I get what I need to be done with a minimum of fuss and quickly and efficiently.
I get what I need to be done with a minimum of fuss and quickly and efficiently.
The iPhone is as much a status symbol as the ugg Boot or a burberry baseball cap.. if you live outside the UK Google them to see.what I mean..
Whatever the case is, I am just saying it is not as black and white as you make it seem (lower price = more sales = more profits). There is many different variables and factors that will affect your theory. When it comes to basic economics, what you say is true. When it comes to real world, basic economics is not the answer.
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