Nobody was surprised when Apple announced that it was going to continue selling its one-year old iPad 2 at a discount alongside its new tablet last month. After all, the Cupertino company pulled the same thing with the iPhone 4 and 4S.
Considering that Apple has sold more than 70 million iPhones over the past two quarters, it's safe to say that keeping the older iPhone around is paying off in spades. And it looks like keeping the iPad 2 around will yield similar results...
We just finished listening to Apple's quarterly earnings call for Q2 of this year, and we managed to pick up some interesting statistics.
As we reported earlier, Apple had another record-breaking financial quarter over the last three months. But it also hit several other high points...
Silicon Valley venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz had poured a cool quarter million dollars into Instagram back when it was just a small startup called Burbn.
Though it never took off, its photo-sharing component was doing quite well, giving birth to the widely popular Instagram photo-sharing service.
Even though Horowitz never invested in Instagram again, they're poised to walk away with a cool $78 million once the $1 billion deal with Facebook closes.
That's a nice 312 times premium on a $250,000 investment, but they could have made potentially hundreds of millions of dollars if they chose to back Burbn in series-B funding.
Instead, the investors gave cofounding CEO Kevin Systrom back information rights and pro rata rights to the series B, never investing in Instagram again...
Apple will webcast its calendar 2012 second-quarter earnings next Tuesday, April 24 at 2pm Pacific / 5pm Eastern. The call will include Apple's performance metrics and sales figures from a three-month period which ended March 31.
According to analysts, Apple is expected to report iPhone sales anywhere between 26 and 44 million units, with the best analysts’ consensus of 35 million units. Some folks are worried about a 24 percent drop in iPhone activations by Verizon and rumors that carriers might drop iPhone subsidy that hurt their bottom line.
I opined these concerns are overblown and should be taken with a grain of salt as crazypants analysts and Apple doomsayers regularly come out of the woodwork ahead of the company's quarterly reports.
With Apple's earning release for the past quarter that ended two weeks ago now just eight days away, analysts are running their spreadsheets like crazy, falling over themselves to guesstimate just how many iPhones the company sold.
And as the iPhone lineup accounts for more than half of Apple's revenue, no wonder it's become Apple's most important business metric. AAPL passing the $600 milestone also owes much to the success of the iPhone, as does the company's projected $1 trillion valuation.
It's almost as if Apple's future and fortunes depend solely on the iPhone. With that in mind, seasoned watchers should ask themselves whether Apple can retain its crown of the world's top smartphone maker in the March quarter.
And, is the six-month old iPhone 4S still attractive enough to keep people interested until the fabled iPhone 5 (or whatever it ends up being called) arrives later this year? As always, only time will tell. But one thing is certain: Wall Street has high hopes in Apple's ability to keep the iPhone freight train chugging along...
AppleInsider passes on a report from an Austin news outlet that Apple could receive tax rebates worth $7.4 million over the next 10 years if it goes ahead with plans to build a new campus in Northwest Austin.
Combine this with the nearly $30 million in tax breaks and incentives it is already set to receive, and Apple has a lot of reasons to want to start building its new offices as soon as possible...
In the months leading up to the iPhone 4S launch, Apple lost a prototype of the handset. It seemed like it was going to be the iPhone 4/Gizmodo debacle all over again, but no pictures or other evidence ever surfaced.
Apple took some heat over the way it handled its search for the device, allegedly raiding the home of Sergio Calderon with a team of police officers. In fact, Sergio threatened to file a lawsuit against the company unless a settlement was reached.
Well here we are, more than 6 months later, and no lawsuit has been filed...
As noted by TheNextWeb, Apple has updated its Investor Relations page to notify shareholders that it will hold its Q2 2012 earnings call on Tuesday, April 24th. The call will start at 2pm PST, and include stats and sales figures from the last three months.
Apple has a lot of momentum right now and is expected to announce another successful quarter. Its stock price is sitting at the highest it's ever been, and its new iPad has broken a number of sales records since it launched early last month...
If you're looking for a way to combine your wallet with your iPhone's carrying case, there are dozens of options. We've even covered a number of wallet-case combos right here on iDB.
But if you haven't come across a case that tickles your fancy, you might want to check this out. The iPhone Money Clip, made by Poddities, attaches directly to your iPhone 4 or 4S...
Ok sure, a lot of us readily hand over hundreds (if not thousands) of dollars of our money to Apple each year in exchange for their latest gadgets. But how many of you would ever trust the Cupertino company with all of your money?
Times Moneyland spotlighted a recent survey, conducted in the US and UK, that aimed to answer that very question. How many people would trust their finances with an Apple-owned bank? Keep reading for the results...
Trading of Apple shares has been briefly halted this morning. According to Business Insider, an errant trade caused the stock to crash a whopping nine percent, hitting a low of $542.80. Trading's been resumed and AAPL opened at $598.39. The Apple stock trades on Nasdaq under the AAPL symbol...
Sprint's stock fell 4% yesterday as investors reacted to a report that the risk of the carrier going bankrupt was increasing. Bernstein analyst Craig Moffett downgraded Sprint shares from "market-perform" to "underperform" based on the news.
While the company, which happens to be the third largest wireless provider in the US, has had a long string of poor quarters over the past few years, analysts had high hopes for the carrier after it finally became an iPhone partner late last fall...