Let's look at a number for a minute: Apple has 51 billion dollars in cash. That's 51,000,000,000 bucks. Or, approximately the amount of money it takes to fill a vault-slash-swimming-pool. Who has that kind of money these days and didn't get it via government bailout? Apple, that's who. What is its secret? It made that money the old-fashioned way, by selling new-fashioned things.
In a time when few companies are profitable and everyone's excited about a flat line since it isn't a downward curve, Apple is making money iHand over iFist. One could presume from this that analysts and others who watch CNBC professionally would be excited about a company with growth and profitability in the current climate. However, that's not the case.
Remember when Apple wasn't doing well? Those bygone days when people may have actually believed the name of the company was "Beleaguered Apple Computer?" Well, once Uncle Steve made his return in 1996, that started to turn around. Apple Computer started making things that start with "i," and in 2001 with the launch of the iPod, Apple was officially cool again. You know, unless you were an analyst on Wall Street, in which case Apple wasn't cool, it was just less lame than before. But seriously, have you seen what sort of stock prices Dell and HP have these days? Now those are tech companies.
I call shenanigans! Now, instead of being impressed with profitability, the question is "Oh sure, you're all profitable, but can you stay that way?" Apple hasn't proven that yet? Explain to me how making ANY money in a time of unprecedented financial volatility is something that gets played down. What will it take before Apple gets a fair shake? A brand new device that sells a million units in three months? Try two and a half. A new version of the same thing released a year later, how long did that take to sell a million? Three days.
Find and replace "Apple" with a non-tech company in some of these articles and see if it still makes as much sense. Just the iPhone product line by itself is bigger than Coca-Cola, but Apple still gets dismissed like this?
Someone needs to have a little heart-to-heart talk with some of these guys. Apparently they've all had their heads down in their BlackBerrys for so long that they don't realize it's cool these days to carry around something Designed In Cupertino. Clearly a lot of other people have figured it out -- what's stopping Wall Street from seeing the light?
'Can Apple maintain profitability?' Yes. originally appeared on TUAW on Tue, 04 Jan 2011 10:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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