Tablette Cafes, Nook discounts & Apple’s WWDC

June 10, 2013 By Leave a Comment

With some help from Google Medoune Secke has set up they claim the first Tablet Café in the world in Dakar in Senegal.

Whilst it may not be the first, it’s, we think, a compelling concept for the African continent and possibly many other parts of the developing world. Affordability is key and compared to PC’s power outages are potentially less catastrophic.

The Dakar Equinoxe “… now sports 15 tablets and has installed cabins for private video chats, while a corner of the cafe is given over to a shop selling various items of electronic equipment.Three PCs remain enthroned on boxes near a wall, but they do not generate much interest among clients, who recline on the cafe’s bright orange and blue sofas, jabbing at their touch screens. Seck says his tablets cost more than PCs but they save on power bills as they consume 25 times less electricity.”

“Upon arrival, customers hand over an ID card and pay in advance for a set connection time before they are given a tablet. When they leave the device is reset, wiping out any data from their session, and it is ready fot the next customer. The Tablette Cafe charges the same price as its predecessor did for PCs: 300 CFA francs (60 euro cents, 80 US cents) per hour.”

“Our hope is that cyber cafes attract new customers interested in a more simple and interactive way of going online, and make significant savings on their number one operating expense: electricity,” Alex Grouet, Google’s business development manager in Francophone Africa, said in a blog post.

Meanwhile both over there and over here Nook are heavily discounting their tablets for the Fathers Day Fest the HD (7inch) is down $70 at $129 and £30 at £129, and the 10 inch HD+ is down $120 at $149 and £50 at £179 (all figures are “from”).

.

Apple meanwhile has it’s Worldwide Developers Conference this week from 10-14 June in San Francisco but few if any iPad announcements are expected and most envisage an Ive driven iOS 7 upgrade and some music announcements with the possiblity of an iRadio service. We shall see. We love the logo!

.

.

Source: Tablette Café – AFP

Filed Under: Apple, Barnes & Noble, Google, Tablets

Cook at D11 and coffee in Cupertino

May 29, 2013 By Leave a Comment

Tim Cook (Apple’s CEO) appeared yesterday at the All Things Digital Executive Conference being held  May 28-30 at the rather impressively located Terranea Resort  “L A’s Ocean front resort” in California

These conferences started back in 2003 so hence this is D11

The interview is with Walt Mossberg and Kara Swisher

Some of the points we found noteworthy:

  • Stock price continues to frustrate him and many others
  • Incredible plans & incredible ideas
  • TV is an area of incredible interest
  • Had a very practical view of glasses which he wears because he has to!
  • Wearables “The wrist is interesting”.
  • Some android phones are really feature phones.
  • Jony Ive* is key (in the iOS update underway)
  • Talked a lot about corporate Taxation but said little!
  • Not afraid of large acquisitions
  • Doesn’t think Apple needs to own content and is unlikely to enter the bidding for Hulu alongside Yahoo and others.

*Still no mention of his knighthood in the Apple bio – strange!

It’s about an hour and twenty minutes worth but for all you aficionado’s out there it is required watching

 

We’re not sure we’d pay the rumoured $610,000 to have coffee with Mr Cook unless of course there was an understanding about disclosure of new product developments!

 Some of the “rules” are interesting:

  • The winner may bring along one guest.
  • Travel and lodging for the visit, which will last between 30 minutes and an hour, are not covered.
  • The location is at Apple Headquarters in Cupertino
  • Visitors will be required to sign a nondisclosure agreement and are subject to a security screening.
  • They can’t liveblog or tweet during their meeting.

If you want to compare and contrast this with last years highlights these are our extracts.

Filed Under: Apple

7 inch tablets win the size battle!

May 10, 2013 By Leave a Comment

Two further, widely differing, estimates of quarter 1 shipments appeared yesterday from Canalys and Digitimes.

The only recurring numerical trend in the majority of the estimates and our average, we can identify, is the figure 9 with Strategy Analytics being the exception! They currently compensate by being the closest to our average!

Click to enlarge

Canalys bundle their mobile devices including Tablets Smartphones and Notebooks, and the total of 308.7  breaks down as follows (in millions):

  • Smartphones –  216.3
  • Netbooks – 50.5
  • Tablets – 41.9

Digitimes simply provide the figures so we’ve created our own little table and incorporated, as ever, a few deductions, primarily from their percentages.

The fascinating figures we think are the breakdown by screen sizes.

At 56% of their total this means that nearly 18 million 7’s were shipped. As the iPad (maxi) is likely virtually all of the 10’s this means that their 7’s came in at something like 13 million so we have a mini to maxi iPad scenario of 66.6% to 33.3% which is even higher than we imagined.

With Google, ala mainly Nexus 7, performing strongly in third place Appleinsider have news of a likely  upgrade coming out next week ahead of the rumoured iPad mini version 2 being delayed until the third quarter.

The tablet wars continue but the size battle, for now, seems to have been won by the 7!

Filed Under: Amazon, Apple, Barnes & Noble, Google, Microsoft, Samsung, Tablets

Apple tablet market share below 40% again

May 2, 2013 By Leave a Comment

IDC yesterday released their preliminary estimates for the first quarter of the year and whilst not really containing any surprises they do confirm the markets tremendous strength. Samsung in particular remarkably managed to actually grow its shipments against the last (seasonal) quarter whilst Amazon did not! Microsoft are making a little progress but Barnes & Noble continue to struggle.

In spite of Apple’s impressive shipments in Q1 which exceeded most estimates their market share at 39.6% which is the third consecutive quarter that they have ever been below 40%. In our view this simply reflects the incredibly competitive market place.

In operating system terms Microsoft with Windows are again making progress rising to third position but with only a 3.7% market share have a way to go to compete with iOS (39.6%) and Android (56.5%).

We’ve updated our average chart and eagerly await any further participants estimates!

Gartner are predicting that by 2017 a majority of companies will have a Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) policy  which primarily means tablets and/or smartphones and this can only help establish the tablet market, This may possibly favour Microsoft to a limited extent, in our view.

In geographic terms Gartner found that US enterprises are twice as likely to allow BYOD as European ones who have the lowest adoption rate internationally in regional terms, lagging India China and Brazil.

The IDC shipment estimate at 49.2 million is only just shy of our, sort of prediction that they might just reach 50 million this quarter so 200 million for the year is more than a distinct possibility. Last year on certain IDC figures Q! represented around 16% of the years total. This might imply an annual figure approaching just over 300 million! At the minute we would guess it could be nearer 250 rather than 200 million.

Filed Under: Amazon, Apple, Barnes & Noble, Google, Microsoft, Samsung, Tablets

Apple Revenues may flatline for the first time since 2003

April 24, 2013 By Leave a Comment

 The guidance given by Apple and our high low mid earnings per share calculations show the following:

Apple guidance Q3 2013 
Apple I.co.uk
High Low Mid
Revenue $ billion 33.5-35.5 35.5 33.5 34.5
Gross margin % 36-37 37 36 36.5
OpEx $ billion 3.85-3.95 3.85 3.95 3.9
Other O/I $ million 300 300 300 300
Tax rate % 26 26 26 26
Earnings per share $ n/a 7.50 6.58 7.03

The EPS figure is calculated on the 946 million shares as at March.

Now exercising our calculator a little further, in somewhat hypothetical mode, we reckon if the whole $50 billion share buy back was undertaken today at a price say of $420 about 119 million shares could be acquired of the fully diluted number of 946 million. This would add something like $1 to the earnings per share.

That increase could optionally be obtained by:

  • A quarterly revenue increase of $4 billion
  • A gross margin increase of 4%

The latter would appear at least difficult! The former incidentally would be roughly equivalent to 6.5 million iPhones!

Our graphic looks at the moving annual total revenues and their quarterly growth. It does look as if with the top end guidance of $35.5 billion being achieved revenues will flatline this quarter which hasn’t happened since 2003.

Our question is whether a $50 billion share buy back will help innovation and growth?

Filed Under: Apple

Apple’s new Results Guidance

April 23, 2013 By Leave a Comment

ROUNDUP am April 24

 From Apple:

 From elsewhere:

  • Conference call transcript Yahoo

Well keep looking for a complete version and add it later if found! 

Instant analyst opinions/headlines:

April 23 updates & article

Apple‘s results, for their Q2 2013 (13 weeks ended March 30) should be released at about 9.30 pm BST followed fairly rapidly by their Conference Call at 10pm BST (2pm PST) which you can listen to live.

UPDATE  9.45pm BST – Results announced:

  • Revenues $43.6 bn
  • EPS $10.09
  • Dividend +15% (to $3.05 (?)
  • Increasing its buy back programme by $50 billion
  • Share price after hours  sharp movements but post conference call virtually unchanged (Formal close was at $406.13) Dipped initially but came back & then rose quickly & then fell back! – Possibly  buy back programme stsbilissed the price. Nasdaq after hours price  Wall Street Journal after hours price
  • Unit sales millions Macs  4.0, iPods 5.6, iPhones 37.4, iPads 19.5
  • Guidance Q 3 Revenues $33.5 – $35.5 Gross margin 36% -37%

Info:

We’ll do a full wrap up tomorrow with transcripts and instant reactions. The conference call was introduced with almost funereal music! Tim Cook, sort of, apologised for the share price performance. Quite a lot of discussion on margins unsurprisingly. Also more detail on the buy back programme which seems to be starting almost immediately and goes through 2015.

UPDATED Results schedule

ORIGINAL ARTICLE

The, sort of, headline figures to look out for we think are:

  • Quarter 2 results consensus Revenues / Earnings per share – $42.4 bn / $10.00
  • Quarter 3 mid guidance  consensus Revenues / Earnings per share – $38.91 bn / $9.08 (based on last quarters guidance this might imply an expected range of revenues of $38-$40 bn and gross margins of 38%-39%)
  • Some believe the dividend may be lifted by over 50% to $4.14 (from the current $2.65). At this level it would yield more than most dividend paying stocks in the Standard & Poor’s 500 Index and be up there with the highest yielding technology stocks. Others think it will remain unchanged!
  • The share price continues it’s weakness but had a mini rally yesterday to close at just under $400 ($398.67) down from its peak of just over $700 in mid September last year. Early on today it was over $400.

The source of much of our information is Philip Elmer-Dewitt editor of Apple 2.0 to whom we, and likely many others, are indebted. We’ve collated certain of his information and apologise lest we have miscompiled in any way!

Our normal graphic uses simple averages (mean) for the Professionals and Independent figures and the mid guidance information from Apple. We also add our guesses. We’re going low on the iPad as the tablet market is hugely competitive. We will update these after the results come out.

This is the first Quarter in which Apples new guidance will be tested – we mentioned before that this departure from their historic practice was significant and we as well as they will be disappointed if they under (or over) shoot their range.

To put this in context Philip Elmer-Dewitt’s graph shows the extent to which Apple have historically overshot their guidance. This go round we think their guidance range is probably something like $9.33 to $10.33.

We will report back later after the results are released and the Conference call has taken place. Usually the Q & A session adds value. We shall see, or rather hear, if this continues to be the case!

Filed Under: Apple

More reasons why iPad sales may be less than 15 million this quarter

April 3, 2013 By Leave a Comment

Apple are due to announce their 2nd quarter (13 weeks ending March 30th) results on April 23rd.

There has been a fair amount of talking down of the likely outcome with, interesting revenue projections released by Guy Munster of Piper Jaffray which AppleInsider covered in some detail.

In addition to the revenue side a wealth of comment  has followed Display Search’s  data indicating that iPad maxi orders collapsed between January and December based on the above panel shipment by size information.

On the iPad’s third birthday we thought we’d have a look at unit sales from some slightly different angles.

1 Proportion of unit sales

IDC recently moved their tablet shipment forecast for the year up to 191mn units and reckoned Apple might have a 46% market share so that on our calculator (as previously mentioned) comes to 87.8mn units.

Now looking historically at the proportion of a calendar years unit sales Apple has done in calendar quarter 1 it came to 18% in 2012 and 11.6% in 2011.

Applying these two percentages to IDC’s 87.8mn units gives us a figure between 10.2mn and 15.8mn.

2 Historic countback

Following Q4 of 2011’s (then) bumper unit sales by Apple of 15.5mn Q1 of 2012 came in at 11.8mn just a little (7%) above Q3 of 2011’s of 11.0mn.

If Apples rather disappointing Q4 iPad sales of 22.9mn dropped back to 7% over the Q3 figure they would come in at 15mn.

3 Proportion of revenues

Using Piper Jaffray’s $41.7 billion revenue figure for the quarter and applying the proportion of revenues iPads were reported by Apple to have generated (pdf) in Q1 of 2012 (their Q2 of course) gives us a figure of 16% so that’s total revenues of some $6.7 billion. Now again from Apples Reclassified Summary Data the iPad average selling price (asp) was $466.93 in calendar Q4. This incidentally was the first quarter of iPad mini Sales and saw an 8.1% reduction in the asp from the previous quarter. We’re going to guess a further 8% drop down to $430 this quarter reflecting the switch to the mini (which we feel may be overstated elsewhere).

This produces unit sales of 15.4 mn.

So there it is then all three approaches come up with the magic figure 15!

We shall see!

Disclosure: We have no position in Apple Inc

Filed Under: Apple

Mobility on the March – Galaxy Gartner & Gadgets

March 15, 2013 By Leave a Comment

Samsung launched their brand new Galaxy S4 last evening in New York at Radio City involving  we thought rather a lot of “S’s”:

  • S Health
  • S Voice drive
  • S Translator
  • Sound and Shot

to name but a few and they even indicate a registered trade mark for their S or possibly the S4 although we couldn’t on a cursory look find it in the UK IPO database!

On the hardware side it’s apparently slimmer with improved camera(s) battery and screen.

On the other side as a “Life companion” it’s said to encompass:

  • Fun
  • Relationship
  • Life Task
  • Life Care

You can get much more info over on their microsite and here’s their promotional video.

We sort of like but at the same time dread the Group play – share music concept! Very much  depends on who, where what and how many!

 

If you can last 50 minutes here’s the (apparently very un Apple like) launch video. Again un Apple like availability is from  around the end of April and will eventually reach 155 countries!

 

 

The other rather intriguing launch yesterday on the mobility front came from Gartner and included some extracts form their “User Survey Analysis: Consumer Gadget Spending Shifts to Mobile and Multiscreen Home Entertainment.”

Click to enlarge

We’ve reordered their table on a 2012 penetration basis and assume that mobile penetration in 2010 was between 60% and 96%. We’ve also added an extra row and column as indicated.

“The Gartner survey was conducted during July and August of 2012 and included responses from more than 8,000 consumers in the U.S., the U.K., Canada and the BRIC countries (Brazil, Russia, India and China).”

The mobile figures we found particularly impressive showing both the largest percentage (+67%) and absolute  (+$116) increase  between 2010 and 2012. They have nearly doubled their share of the overall device spend from 3.4% to 6% moving up from 10th to 7th place.

“According to the survey, legacy products such as TVs and desktop computers have the highest mean years between upgrades, at four-and-a-half years and four years, respectively, while newer product classes such as tablets and e-readers have yet to be replaced by the majority of respondents. Replacement and upgrades of fixed devices such as desktop PCs and game consoles will be deferred or abandoned as consumers find they can do most of what they want on more recently purchased portable devices anywhere they want when they want. The things they can’t do will either get postponed to a later time or be forgotten about altogether as consumers reorganize tasks and activities to the devices and services they prefer to use.”

It will be fascinating to see how the tablet situation (arguably the other primary mobile device) develops in the future with, we think it moving to be possibly in 3rd position but at least amongst the top 5 in penetration terms.

We shall see.

Filed Under: Apple, Mobile, Samsung

Sextuplets for the Amazon family

March 14, 2013 By Leave a Comment

They have now grown by one in the UK, France, Germany, Italy Spain and Japan. The name of the new addition is the Kindle Fire HD 8.9”.

In another aggressive move they have lowered the US starter price from $299 to $269.

Click to enlarge

In the UK  the starter price is £229 which compares with the iPad2 entry level price for a maxi of £329. So coincidentally that’s exactly £100 cheaper! Another coincidence is that it is also exactly the same price as the Nook HD+!

We wonder if Google will react as they are now well above the average larger tablet price which is now virtually £300.

In total market terms in Q4 2012 IDC reckoned that the Kindle tablet family got about 11.5% market share in 3rd place behind Samsung with 15.1%. This move may well propel Amazon into second place by the end of the year with their wider market availability.

The Press release credits the price decrease as being achievable due to increased volumes “As we expand Kindle Fire HD 8.9” to Europe and Japan, we’ve been able to increase our production volumes and decrease our costs. Across our business at Amazon, whenever we are able to create cost efficiencies like this, we want to pass the savings along to our customers.”

It’s certainly good to see Amazon making the whole product range available in the UK. So how about some free movies in the UK Prime offering – it can’t be far away can it?

In other related news Home Retail Group (the Argos owners) have just released their end of year trading statement covering the 8 weeks ended 2 March and again quote specifically the demand for tablets as a positive influence. “Total sales at Argos grew by 4.3% to £501m. …. Like-for-like sales increased by 5.2% in the period. Consumer electronics continued to deliver an improved sales performance driven by strong growth in tablets, which together with further growth in white goods and core electricals, more than offset weaker trading in homewares.

Total internet sales grew in the period, resulting in internet penetration increasing to 43% of Argos’ total sales, up from 40% a year ago. This growth was supported by the mobile commerce channel in which sales grew by 117% versus last year.”

They appear to stock all the major US vendors products (bar the Surface) along with Samsung and many others. So further evidence of a buoyant market as indicated by IDC a few days ago.

Exciting times!

Disclosure: We have Marketing Affiliate arrangements with Amazon

 

Filed Under: Amazon, Apple, Barnes & Noble, Google, Microsoft, Samsung, Tablets

iPad sales growth rate slowing to 15%?

March 12, 2013 By Leave a Comment

IDC have just come out with an increased forecast of tablet sales/shipments for the year. An overall increase of just over 10%, sort of, hides a nearly 30% increase in android sales of we reckon going up by some 20 million and achieving nearly 50% of the overall market.

This is clearly at the expense of Apple and with a little extrapolation here & there (F = IDC forecast & e = our estimate) we see their growth rate forecast coming down to something like 15% from 2014.

Click to enlarge

This cannot be a complete surprise as if we look back to the iPod once it got above the million sales level it had 3 years of dramatic growth before being disrupted!

We though have a suspicion that the iPad may well have a longer growth track!

Another innovative product with slowing/negative growth is the eReader where IDC reckon “The growth of low-cost tablets is clearly damaging the prospects of the single-use eReader, and IDC reduced its forecast for the category by an average of 14% between 2013 and 2016. IDC believes eReader shipments peaked in 2011 at 26.4 million units. After declining to 18.2 million units in 2012, the category is expected to grow only modestly in 2013 and 2014, before it begins a gradual and permanent decline beginning in 2015.”

Elsewhere in support of a rapidly expanding tablet market Digitimes  forecast that “Shipments for touch panels used in tablet products are expected to drop 2.5% sequentially by the end of the quarter to 49.92 million units.”

Whilst it is Apples and Oranges, so as to speak, the drop in overall tablet sales/shipments per IDC last year between Q4 2010 and the first quarter of 2011 was over 40% and we certainly expect a decrease from the 50 million or so in Q4 2012 but we are optimistic that sales will be well above 35 million with possibly a 2013 total exceeding 200 million.

We shall see!

All annual figures relate to calendar years.

Filed Under: Apple, Tablets
« Older Posts