For the first time since Tim Cook took over as the CEO, Apple’s earnings ended up lower than expected. The world’s most valuable tech company sure had its work cut out for itself during 2012, thanks to Samsung’s winning bestseller devices. But was that really the only reason why Apple failed to post great profits during the first quarter?
The company generated $54.5 billion of revenue and $13.1 billion in earnings during this period, which translates to $13.81 per share. It did end up lower than the expected values of $54.7 billion revenue, even though the earnings per share was higher than the $13.44 expected by Wall Street. However, Apple did manage to do better than its own expectations – the company had forecasted $52 billion revenue and $11.75 per share in October 2012.
Tim Cook remained optimistic about the results, and went on to note how this was a record revenue earned by Apple in a quarter. Apple managed to sell 47.8 million iPhones, 22.9 million iPads, 12.7 million iPods and 4.1 million Macs during the quarter. However, the company’s forecast for the next quarter is lesser – expected revenue is between $41 and $43 billion, while Wall Street has forecasted revenues of $45.6 billion for the same period.
So what exactly happened to Apple during the period? Was it just because its archrival’s products ended up stealing the show? While it is true that Samsung managed to sell a huge number of Galaxy S3 and Galaxy Note 2 smartphones, we doubt if that’s the only reason why the iPhone 5 didn’t find as many takers.
What further pushed consumers away from the iPhone 5 was essentially boredom – there wasn’t much that had changed since the iPhone 4S. Even though the iPhone 5 is slimmer, lighter and more powerful than its predecessor, the overall user experience hasn’t undergone a drastic makeover. Another huge disadvantage was that the iPhone 5 still had a 4-inch screen, in the age of the 4.8-inch Galaxy S3 and 5.5-inch Galaxy Note 2.
Will Apple make more amends to the next iPhone due to come out sometime by mid-2013 to win back some of its consumers? Can we expect to see a different form factor for the iPhone as well as a new UI for the iOS?
