[Dapper37]

Apple will go back up, but a structural fault has been detected! Reinventing their eco system will take time, Just ask RIM! Watch for Apple to start buying their way to wherever their going! Ala MS!

[brmiller1976]

Apple's enterprise, sans cash, is worth $300 billion at current margins.

What happens when Samsung launches the Galaxy Cheapo with iPhone 4S-like specs for $100 (all-in) in developing countries?

What about the high-end Huawei Android and Windows Phones for $299 that outperform the $800 iPhone 5?

What about the $79 iPad Mini competitors?

We've seen this story before. Apple dominated the personal computer business in the late 1980s to early 1990s. I remember being in high school in 1993 and 1994 as Commodore was going under, being told that Apple's dominance over PCs was assured since they were the world's biggest seller of PCs. Until the Windows price war broke out and dragged them low. History has a tendency to rhyme, and those killer valuations will disappear if Apple is forced into 4% margin territory by Huawei, ZTE and Samsung.

[Bold_until_Hybrid_Comes]

Apple will go back up, but a structural fault has been detected! Reinventing their eco system will take time, Just ask RIM! Watch for Apple to start buying their way to wherever their going! Ala MS!

The fault has been detected, and is about to be exploited. It's an *OLD* OS. It's about to be the OLDEST in six days. The MISSING of sales targets is an indication of this. The target was set, it was attempted to reach the target set out, and FAILED at reaching the target. Sales are still very high but missing these targets are the first clear sign of the empires inevitable rebuilding process for a lacking operating system.

[brmiller1976]

iOS is the new Windows 95. Old, established, familiar, and just waiting to have someone new come along and disrupt it.

[Bold_until_Hybrid_Comes]

iOS is the new Windows 95. Old, established, familiar, and just waiting to have someone new come along and disrupt it.

And someone is indeed about to come along.

[kevinnugent]

We've seen this story before. Apple dominated the personal computer business in the late 1980s to early 1990s. I remember being in high school in 1993 and 1994 as Commodore was going under, being told that Apple's dominance over PCs was assured since they were the world's biggest seller of PCs. Until the Windows price war broke out and dragged them low. History has a tendency to rhyme, and those killer valuations will disappear if Apple is forced into 4% margin territory by Huawei, ZTE and Samsung.

Apple were the world's biggest sellers of PC's?

[mikeo007]

Apple were the world's biggest sellers of PC's?

No, but doesn't making up random facts make people seem smart?

[brmiller1976]

Apple were the world's biggest sellers of PC's?

Yes they were. In fact, in 1992, 1993, and 1994, nobody sold more PCs than Apple. They even advertised it with their "#1" campaign as an effort to fend off criticism from the Windows camp about the high Mac prices.

I do understand that some whipper-snappers are too young to remember those days.

[brmiller1976]

No, but doesn't making up random facts make people seem smart?

That was rude, uncalled for and inaccurate.

[Bold_until_Hybrid_Comes]

That was rude, uncalled for and inaccurate.

100% agree. Some may not understand until it hits a little closer to home.

[Shanerredflag]

How many days till launch?

[mikeo007]

That was rude, uncalled for and inaccurate.

IBM was the #1 PC manufacturer in 1993 and 1994.
Seems accurate to me.

[astraith]

1. Although Apple missed the sales predictions on iPhone sales, they still sold a sh#t ton of iPhones. That said, i agree it was smart to wait for a January release for many reasons-they didn't have to compete with all other holiday smartphone craziness, it gave them time to make a really solid OS, they took time to attract developers, etc...

2. I think I read that by the end of 2013, the smartphone penetration in North America only will be up to 50%, so there is definitely a lot of room for RIM to make a splash. I also think that smartphone users (except us BlackBerry folk) aren't as loyal as they used to be and are more willing to try something new-hopefully this will bring a lot of people back to BlackBerry. I think it's your latter point that is the most important...there's a good chance that Apple just isn't as cool as it used to be and people are finally over the hype. That's great news for RIM!

At the end of the day, I think that any doubts by wall street about the world's most valuable company opens up great opportunities for RIM to show the world that they're not out of the smartphone game, they invented it!

Counting down the days until the 30th!!

RIM didn't invent the smartphone ....

[southlander]

47.8 million iPhones. Like, wow.

And yet Samsung sell more?? Dear Lord.

Yep. Galaxy S3 is/was the iPhone killer, so to speak.

[sinsin07]

I doubt this is true I think all their products make the same profits as now that the Apple craze is here more and more macs are being sold. And since they use the same parts as normal PCs and they charge twice as much their actual profits on macs are extremely high iwould think more so then the iPhone, iPad and iPod

Forbes, 8-19-2012: Apple's iPhone Is Now Worth More Than All Of Microsoft
"One Apple product, something that didn’t exist five years ago, has higher sales than everything Microsoft has to offer. More than Windows, Office, Xbox, Bing, Windows Phone, and every other product that Microsoft has created since 1975. In the quarter ended March 31, 2012, iPhone had sales of $22.7 billion; Microsoft Corporation, $17.4 billion."

[Jake Storm]

Looks like the media found a new whipping boy.

[RubberChicken76]

Apple will pop back up. The market is over reacting.

The market does this a lot. No matter how much Apple (or RIM or any other company) goes on a tear in sales, eventually there's a point where a the analysts keep 'expecting more' than ultimately the company can deliver. Even if the company meets or exceeds their guidance, the street often react to how they meet the predictions of analysts.

This is usually followed by moronic comments like, "Apple is doomed; the beginning of the end ..." etc.

[Shanerredflag]

^^ True ^^... but to be honest (everyone), unless Apple releases some monumental consumer driven, unprecedented product (within six months)...(with proven financials)...trend line in down for a while yet, where it stops?

[DuexNoir]

1. The fact that they missed holiday sales predictions means that Thor may have been correct in waiting till January to launch BB10. His strategic decision appears to have been exactly the right thing to do because releasing before Christmas did not garuntee Apple high sales.

In hindsight, Heins' decision to skip the holiday sales may be a good call. During the fall, we had both iPhone5 and WP8 release hogging all the spotlight and then consumers' distraction with the holiday would leave very little attention remaining for BB10 to capture. Now that all that hustle and bustle is over, everyone is focused on RIM and BB10, since there's really no other distractions around right now (just look at the slew of media buzz and talks going on now about BB10). All this extra attention may help with the launch and sales. We will have to wait and see but, so far, I believe it may be a good call after all.

47.8 million iPhones. Like, wow.

And yet Samsung sell more?? Dear Lord.

Well, one has to consider that Samsung as a large number of different phones out there compared to Apple with its iPhone5 (and what, 4 and 4S?), and I'm sure when Samsung gives their sales number it's a total lump sum. If Samsung only has 3 phones to sale like Apple (one new, and 2 older versions), I can imagine the sale volume may be different.

[brmiller1976]

IBM was the #1 PC manufacturer in 1993 and 1994.
Seems accurate to me.

Nope, not even close. IBM wasn't even in the top three in 1993 and 1994. Its PC business flagged badly with the launch of the PS/2 and MCA and never recovered.

That's one reason why they started the PowerPC alliance with Apple -- they were being driven out of the PC business.

[brmiller1976]

Forbes, 8-19-2012: Apple's iPhone Is Now Worth More Than All Of Microsoft
"One Apple product, something that didn’t exist five years ago, has higher sales than everything Microsoft has to offer. More than Windows, Office, Xbox, Bing, Windows Phone, and every other product that Microsoft has created since 1975. In the quarter ended March 31, 2012, iPhone had sales of $22.7 billion; Microsoft Corporation, $17.4 billion."

Of course, Microsoft's gross margin is 80%, while the iPhone's was around 40%, but hey, who cares about profitability?

[brmiller1976]

This is usually followed by moronic comments like, "Apple is doomed; the beginning of the end ..." etc.

Apple isn't doomed, but if you bought at 700 (or 600 when it was supposedly "buying the dip"), your portfolio might be feeling a bit doomish.

[cgk]

People want it both ways here - when the market talks about RIM they are talking nonsense, when they talk about Apple, it's literally straight from the mouth of god. Let's put this in context, Apple makes more off accessories that RIM makes. The 'fall' of Apple is still too far out (beyond the next 12 months) to have any significant impact on RIM's chances for survival, it still all comes to RIM selling enough BB10 devices at decent margins.

[ccbs]

As a observer on the smartphone market, to me, delaying to the January 30th is a very bad decision. As a shareholder, I don't really like the decision to delay the launch if possible. But given their software prowess I think they had tried their best.

Mobile World congress will be on the beginning of Feb and all the spotlight will be on the new 4.7" and 5" 1080P Superphone, featuring the new generation Tegra4 and Snapdragon 800 SOC. All the trendy technology websites will compare the Z10 to the top end phones, which will include the Galaxy S4, HTC M7 etc and leave wanting more from RIMM. Z10 in its Snapdragon S4 form is even slower than the proclaimed outdated iPhone 5 and will be even more outdated compare to the upcoming superphones. I can foretell from my magic ball, in one month, people on this site will start to proclaim that hardware, screen resolution, SOC spec, benchmark and etc don't matter and peak on BB10 is the be-all-end-all feature that one will ever need in a smartphone.

[kevinnugent]

As a observer on the smartphone market, to me, delaying to the January 30th is a very bad decision. As a shareholder, I don't really like the decision to delay the launch if possible. But given their software prowess I think they had tried their best.

Mobile World congress will be on the beginning of Feb and all the spotlight will be on the new 4.7" and 5" 1080P Superphone, featuring the new generation Tegra4 and Snapdragon 800 SOC. All the trendy technology websites will compare the Z10 to the top end phones, which will include the Galaxy S4, HTC M7 etc and leave wanting more from RIMM. Z10 in its Snapdragon S4 form is even slower than the proclaimed outdated iPhone 5 and will be even more outdated compare to the upcoming superphones. I can foretell from my magic ball, in one month, people on this site will start to proclaim that hardware, screen resolution, SOC spec, benchmark and etc don't matter and peak on BB10 is the be-all-end-all feature that one will ever need in a smartphone.

Haha. Maybe they will, but if the phone (with QNX) can do everything well with no lag and provides decent battery life then what's the issue. As Apple would say, it's about the experience not the specs.