The figures posted by Apple just a few hours ago are either fantastic or vulgar depending on your view point. A company performing well, meeting customer needs and rightfully succeeding? Or a brand which has attained an air of exclusivity with handsets sold at huge markups just to maintain that whilst dodging tax? Again, your opinion.
With a 2014 revenue of $74.6bn (which, by the way, is a 30% increase from 2013) and sales in China up 70%, the profits have exceeded the expectations of every financial analyst around, with a shocking $18bn (£11.8bn) net profit.
What are Apple going to do with all that cash? Well, by our calculations they could purchase 90 F-35C Lightning II fighter jets (about $200 million each). I bet that’s what they’re up to. You’re all secretly funding a new Apple Top Gun school. This is Ghostrider requesting a flyby. Negative Ghostrider, the pattern is full.
If those numbers aren’t enough for you, consider the fact that some 74.5 million iPhones were sold in Q4 2014, again far higher than anyone would’ve guessed.
Tim Cook, who recently saw his pay take a huge rise too, said that demand for the iPhone models was simply “staggering”, although the iPad didn’t seem quite as popular with an 18% fall in sales from a year earlier.
The next 18 billion dollars could come from the Apple Watch, but we will have to see how that’s received when it goes on sale in April.