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Posts tagged with "apple"

A Transcript of Apple’s Q4 2015 Earnings Call→

Serenity Caldwell and Jason Snell, writing for iMore, have already put together a transcript of Apple’s Q4 2015 earnings call. This is where you want to go to get all the details shared by Tim Cook and CFO Luca Maestri earlier today, such as this tidbit on the iPhone Upgrade Program:

Rod: On the Upgrade Program, can you envision a time ever, maybe in the U.S. or elsewhere, where you would not have to come into an Apple Store to take advantage of the upgrade? You might be able to do that somewhere else?

Tim: That’s a really good question. We actually solved that problem back in 2007, but then quickly had to change it in order to scale in a major way. And so that is something that we is always in our mind, that one day from a customer experience point of view, we would like to make things as easy as possible for the customer. And to some degree, you can already do that with buying online. But there are many different plans and so forth that people buy that they have to come in for. Yes, over time we’d love to have that automated, working with our partners with service providers.

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Apple Q4 2015 Results: $51.5 Billion Revenue, 48 Million iPhones, 9.8 Million iPads Sold

Apple has just published their financial results for Q4 2015, which covered the three months from July to September 2015. The company posted revenue of $51.5 billion. The company sold 9.8 million iPads, 48 million iPhones, and 5.7 million Macs, earning a quarterly net profit of $11.1 billion.

“Fiscal 2015 was Apple’s most successful year ever, with revenue growing 28% to nearly $234 billion. This continued success is the result of our commitment to making the best, most innovative products on earth, and it’s a testament to the tremendous execution by our teams,” said Tim Cook, Apple’s CEO. “We are heading into the holidays with our strongest product lineup yet, including iPhone 6s and iPhone 6s Plus, Apple Watch with an expanded lineup of cases and bands, the new iPad Pro and the all-new Apple TV which begins shipping this week.”

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Christina Warren Interviews Jony Ive→

Mashable’s Christina Warren sat down with Jony Ive, Vogue’s Anna Wintour, and Costume Institute Curator Andrew Bolton earlier this week to discuss fashion in the age of technology, Apple Watch, and more. From the interview:

Ive made an interesting observation about form and function. “What I’ve noticed is if something works but emotionally you don’t feel a connection — it’s ugly — you’ll use it, but you’ll use it begrudgingly and you’ll change at the first opportunity and you’ll build no relationship with the brand or the people behind it. And so you really have to be successful in both.”

Last week, Apple announced they will sponsor the 2016 ‘Fashion in an Age of Technology’ Met Gala.

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Apple Opens @AppleMusicHelp Twitter Account to Answer Support Questions→

Benjamin Mayo, writing for 9to5Mac:

Apple is continuing to expand its presence on social media services, today launching a brand new @AppleMusicHelp Twitter account to answer queries and support questions live over Twitter related to its Apple Music service. The account is manned each day of the week from 6 AM – 8 PM Pacific Time. Apple representatives will watch the account’s mentions timeline and try to help resolve people’s problems.

Good to see Apple valuing Twitter as a fast and efficient support system. There’s something to be said about the simplicity of asking a support question via Twitter versus opening a ticket or sending an email.

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iPhone 6s and iPhone 6s Plus Opening Weekend Sales Hit a Record 13 Million

Apple announced this morning that the iPhone 6s and iPhone 6s Plus has sold more than 13 million units over its opening weekend. The new iPhone went on sale last Friday in the United States, Australia, Canada, China, France, Germany, Hong Kong, Japan, New Zealand, Puerto Rico, Singapore, and the UK.

“Sales for iPhone 6s and iPhone 6s Plus have been phenomenal, blowing past any previous first weekend sales results in Apple’s history,” said Tim Cook, Apple’s CEO. “Customers’ feedback is incredible and they are loving 3D Touch and Live Photos, and we can’t wait to bring iPhone 6s and iPhone 6s Plus to customers in even more countries on October 9.”

13 million units sold over the opening weekend is a new record for iPhone sales. Last year Apple sold 10 million units of the iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus, whilst in 2013 Apple sold 9 million units of the iPhone 5s and iPhone 5c. In fact, Apple has consistently beaten their opening weekend iPhone sales every single year.

Second Wave of iPhone 6s Launch Countries Announced

Apple also announced today that the second wave of iPhone 6s and iPhone 6s Plus launch countries will get the device on October 9 and 10. Over those two days, the new iPhones will launch in 42 countries in this second wave, including Italy, Mexico, Russia, Spain and Taiwan.

The full list of countries:

iPhone 6s and iPhone 6s Plus will roll out worldwide to more than 40 additional countries and territories beginning October 9 including Andorra, Austria, Belgium, Bosnia, Bulgaria, Croatia, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, Greece, Greenland, Hungary, Iceland, Ireland, Isle of Man, Italy, Latvia, Liechtenstein, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Maldives, Mexico, Monaco, Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Russia, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland and Taiwan. On October 10, countries include Bahrain, Jordan, Kuwait, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and United Arab Emirates.

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Apple Publishes Updated Employee Diversity Data→

Apple yesterday published updated data on the diversity of their employees, for the second year in a row. Some of the news is good (Apple hired 65% more women in the last 12 months than they did in the previous year) but the picture is still bleak in other respects (only 22% of “tech” employees are female). Apple’s updated Diversity webpage includes a letter from Tim Cook, in which he says:

Last year we reported the demographics of our employees for the first time externally, although we have long prioritized diversity. We promised to improve those numbers and we’re happy to report that we have made progress. In the past year we hired over 11,000 women globally, which is 65 percent more than in the previous year. In the United States, we hired more than 2,200 Black employees — a 50 percent increase over last year — and 2,700 Hispanic employees, a 66 percent increase. In total, this represents the largest group of employees we’ve ever hired from underrepresented groups in a single year. Additionally, in the first 6 months of this year, nearly 50 percent of the people we’ve hired in the United States are women, Black, Hispanic, or Native American.

You can view all the numbers on Apple’s Diversity page, including some interactive statistics, the full letter from Tim Cook and information on what Apple is doing today to improve diversity at Apple, and steps they are taking to improve the numbers in the future.

Some people will read this page and see our progress. Others will recognize how much farther we have to go. We see both. And more important than these statistics, we see tens of thousands of Apple employees all over the world, speaking dozens of languages, working together. We celebrate their differences and the many benefits we and our customers enjoy as a result.

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Apple Redesigns Website, Integrates with Store Pages→

Apple launched a redesign of their website today, integrating the product presentation and shopping experiences into one and tweaking the navigation bar with different menu items and icons.

Notably, the separate store.apple.com website is no more, as it now simply leads to apple.com with store pages available at apple.com/shop/ URLs.

As John Gruber writes:

Knowing what I know about the old online store, this was a massive behind-the-scenes undertaking, but the result looks and works like what most people would have expected all along. (Someone should count the instances of “finally” in the headlines about this change.) The old two-site approach was like having separate rooms in a physical retail store — a showroom up front, and a sales room in the back. Now it’s just one room. (And in another subtle parallel to the physical Apple stores, the website now uses a shopping bag instead of a cart.)

Speaking to TechCrunch, an Apple spokesperson explained why the company decided to make this change:

“We redesigned Apple.com knowing that our customers want to explore, research and shop in one place,” said an Apple spokesperson in a statement. “The new Apple.com takes the very best of our existing site and our online store to give customers one simple destination to learn and buy without navigating between two different sites. We’ve also improved several of the site’s features to make shopping easier than ever for our customers.”

The updated website will likely make for an easier shopping flow – especially on smartphones – as there’s less switching contexts between viewing and buying because everything’s integrated. It’ll be interesting to see if updating the store with new products will still require Apple to bring the store down, or if they will appear and propagate for everyone across the world like the new website did today. Probably a good change, but let’s pour one out for Is The Apple Store Down.

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A Weekend at KansasFest→

Good story by Jason Koebler on KansasFest:

Every summer, about 70 people descend on Kansas City’s Rockhurst University for KansasFest, a conference that can best be described as a 5-day sleepaway camp exclusively for fans of the Apple II, one of the first commercially successful personal computers. KansasFest started in 1989 as an Apple II developer’s conference—26 years later, it’s still entirely dedicated to the Apple II.

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Apple Q3 2015 Results: $49.6 Billion Revenue, 47.5 Million iPhones, 10.9 Million iPads Sold

Apple has published their Q3 2015 financial results for the quarter that spanned from April to June 2015. The company posted revenue of $49.6 billion. The company sold 10.9 million iPads, 47.5 million iPhones, and 4.8 million Macs, earning a quarterly net profit of $10.7 billion.

“We had an amazing quarter, with iPhone revenue up 59 percent over last year, strong sales of Mac, all-time record revenue from services, driven by the App Store, and a great start for Apple Watch,” said Tim Cook, Apple’s CEO. “The excitement for Apple Music has been incredible, and we’re looking forward to releasing iOS 9, OS X El Capitan and watchOS 2 to customers in the fall.”

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