Hola Todos!
Today is a rare day – it only happens four times per year. Apple rarely talks company performance but when they do, it always interesting to see if they’ll divulge anything new or interesting. Sometime later today after the market has closed (EST), Apple will announce their 2013 3rd quarter results.
Philip Elmer-DeWitt does a bang up job gathering and summarizing both the institutional and the independent analysts’ projections. In short, most feel we’ll see flat revenue and profits or perhaps the first year-to-year revenue drop in 10 years. If that happens, I can’t see how the stock isn’t going to take a hit.
This story can all be summarized to one word: growth. The iPod, iPhone, iPad and iTunes have fueled Apple for the past ten years and their growth is not the same. I still expect iPad to be strong and even iTunes could be a Fortune 500 company. I do not believe the smartphone market has peaked but I do believe it is not growing at the same pace it was in 2011. Recently, I started listening to Horce Dideu of the Asymco.com blog and his Critical Path podcast and he consistently emphasizes that Tim Cook and team has to have a few new products up their sleeves to fuel the next wave of Apple’s growth.
I’ll be listening – and I wonder if Apple will fare better than Google and Microsoft did in the past week.
Best regards
Dr. Dan-o
Associate Professor of Marketing
Stillman School of Business
Seton Hall University