Crazy Hawt

Apple released their 3Q09 Quarterly results just now. I’m not going to post any of the boring press release details. You can read that here. However, I’m listening to their conference call right now, and I’ll post any interesting tidbits below. Click to continue reading!

First off, I’ll save you the read by telling you in advance that this really wasn’t a very thrilling phone call. Most of the analysts asked pretty average questions. A few analysts tried to dig a bit about how Apple felt about AT&T and whether or not they were exploring any other options. Apple did a very admirable job of denying everything and saying how great of a partner AT&T is. Tim Cook said,  ”I think it’s an excellent relationship and we are very happy with it.”

Something else of note was that Tim Cook said that they categorized their offerings of “pocket products” into three separate categories: traditional MP3 players, touch devices, and iPhones. He admitted that the sales of the traditional MP3 players were on the decline, but he noted that they had already internally forecasted that happening. He noted that iPod Touch sales are more than making up for that decline. This is interesting because Apple hasn’t traditionally given any information about sales within the iPod line. He did note that they have over 70% of US marketshare.

He continued on and said, “Response to the new iPhone 3GS has been tremendous. . . . We are currently unable to meet demand . . . . The App Store now offers over 65,000 applications.”

In the Apple stores, half of all purchasers are new to the Mac platform. Apple has been saying this for a long time, though. I think this is an excellent indicator of how Apple is growing relative to the rest of the industry. As soon as Apple stops giving this figure, that may be an indicator that their growth rate is slowing.

Tim Cook also said there has been a “negligible” amount of stimulus money flowing all the way down to institutions who are buying computers.

Tim Cook would not break down sales between the $99 iPhone and the iPhone 3GS product line as he rightly said that would be competitive information.

David Bailey from Goldman Sachs asked about the iPhone in the enterprise. Tim Cook said that the Phone is doing well with large orgs that allow phones to be bought for personal use. He also said that almost 20% of the Fortune 100 companies have bought 100K or more phones… I think that’s very impressive.

Tim Cook said, ”Snow Leopard is an even better Leopard… Microsoft exchange support built right into the OS.” He took that opportunity to jab at Windows and mention that not even Microsoft bundles exchange support into the OS. When asked about it being priced at $29.99, Tim commented that this does everything better than Leopard and they want everyone to upgrade as soon as possible. The low price obviously is supposed to (and likely will) incentivize this.

An analyst from RBC Capital addressed the app store competitors. Tim Cook says they just shipped the next major version of the iPhone OS, the App Store available in 77 countries, and they have a 45 million install base (ipHone + ipod touch). He considers the App Store is “an unprecedented success.” He then spoke about the number of apps available on other platforms. He mentioned there were  1 – 2000 apps on Nokia and RIM’s stores, and the latest number from android is less than 5000. Here’s the big kicker… He didn’t even mention PALM! ZANG!

Of course, netbooks came up… Tim said, “Our goal is not to build the most computers. It’s to build the best. . . . At this point, we don’t see the way to build a great product for this $399 / $499 price point unit.” Okay, great – so we know if Apple releases a netbook, it will be at least $599 .

For me, it was most interesting that nobody asked about Steve Jobs’ health! They have been asking this over and over on previous earnings calls. Officially, he’s back at the company now, and nobody decided to ask about it?? Idiot analysts. I’m a bit surprised that nobody asked why AT&T isn’t yet offering tethering / MMS to US iPhone customers. I actually expected that Steve would pop on to take a question or two. Oh well I guess not.

Great quarter, AAPL.

(full disclosure: I own shares of AAPL)

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