heh! So Apple's growth is strong. No worries, mate! Have another cup of coffee. ;)

Interesting that they didn't release any hard iPhone numbers. If they hoping for a million in the first quarter, then the 500,000-700,000 first-week numbers are probably way off.

Rueters is reporting that Apple revealed that it sold 270, 000 iPhones in the first quarter, which would be the first two days.

http://www.reuters.com/article/marketsNews/idUKWEN969920070725?rpc=44

Right, can you please pull back some engineers from this phone project and come up with an updated mac mini or Imac ?

Funny, of all the figures, the one that jumps out at me is the gross margin. 37 freaking percent? For a CE focused, hard goods company?

I can't tell you how unbelievable that is. What it actually means is that their products are way overpriced... but also says their marketing is so brilliant, that they get folks to keep paying the price.

Think about this... they could sell the mid range tower for 1800 bucks, a 20" iMac for 900, a 30G Pod for 150, and STILL makes large profits.

R&D isn't free. You're saying that because Apple isn't charging the minimum amount it costs to assemble and iPhone, it's overpriced.

First of all, Apple is not a charity. Do you expect them to give their products away at cost? Second, Apple does their own R&D, and that costs money. A lot of money. How many man-hours do you think it took to create the iPhone? I believe Jobs said that they had been working on it for three years. Those people don't work for free either.

I'm guessing if they sold their products at the prices you mentioned, it wouldn't quite be enough to cover all their expenses. Yes, it's a lot of profit, but it also costs a lot of money do things the way they do it.

I have to agree with Johnny. R&D, Marketing, manufacturing all cost lots of money. So sure the product by itself maybe cheap to pay for in parts, but the bottom line is that doesn't tell the whole story.

Neither Apple nor at&t made any predictions as to how many iPhones would be sold. Neither said a single word. So some analysts pulled a figure out of their asses and it became the gospel number for the Jesus device? Now the real sales figures don't match the figure pulled from analyst's anal cavities and suddenly the iPhone is a dud and the stock drops 6% in a day.

Could someone PLEASE explain this to me! Now I know why I pretty much stay away from stocks in where I keep my meager assets.

seem to be eternally stuck in the "what about me?!!" camp.

Apple has great products and they sell at competitive prices with comparable quality goods. By some numbers, its cheaper to buy and own that those comparable quality goods. But that's never good enough, is it?

the cost of R&D can't be overstated with a company like Apple. They design and rethink just about everything. Companies like Dell and HP let their suppliers do a great deal of the work, but Apple does their own engineering and designs. This used to be a reason they were scoffed at... the infamous "not designed here" syndrome. But now the wisdom of this approach is being revealed. It's one reason Apple products can't be easily duplicated by other companies - Apple owns the IP, not the suppliers.

And R&D isn't an easy thing to account for with profit margins. So that 37% isn't as obscene as it may seem.

That said, 37%!!! wow!