MacRumors

Following yesterday's news that the independent film JOBS starring Ashton Kutcher as Steve Jobs will open in theaters on April 19, ETonline.com has released the first video clip from the film. The brief clip shows Kutcher as Jobs speaking with Josh Gad in the role of Steve Wozniak.

In the clip, Jobs (played by Ashton Kutcher) is raving about the operating system that Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak (played by Josh Gad) created. While Jobs is certain that this will become a ubiquitous product for mass consumption, Wozniak needs convincing.

"Nobody wants to buy a computer," says Wozniak.

"How does somebody know what they want if they've never even seen it?" Jobs replies.

In related news, management appears to have made a change to the styling of the film's title, as there had been a fair amount of confusion and criticism over the original "jOBS" styling, an homage to the "i" naming scheme for Apple's products.

But it appears that in recent weeks various official presences for the film such as a revamped teaser site, Twitter account, and Facebook page have adopted a new all-caps styling for JOBS, with the "J" appearing slightly larger than the other capitalized letters in the film's new promotional logo.

JOBS premieres tomorrow at the Sundance Film Festival ahead of the public release on April 19.

(Thanks, Joel!)

Following yesterday's record-breaking earnings numbers for the first fiscal quarter of 2013 that still fell short of analyst expectations, Apple CEO Tim Cook has sent out an email to employees (via 9to5Mac) congratulating them on the performance and announcing an employees-only town hall meeting scheduled for today.

Team,

We’ve just reported another record setting quarter, thanks to everyone’s incredible hard work and focus. We sold over 75 million iOS devices in the holiday quarter alone, which is a testament to the strength of Apple’s innovation. Please join me for an employee communications meeting tomorrow at 10 a.m. Pacific time in the auditorium of De Anza 3. We’ve created a space on AppleWeb where you can submit your questions in advance, and we’ll do our best to answer as many of them as we can during the meeting. The meeting will be broadcast live throughout Cupertino and at many other Apple locations. Please check AppleWeb for details.

Tim

Apple has held similar meetings in the past, with discussion at last year's meeting reportedly focusing on the company's philanthropy and also including an announcement of a new hardware discount program for company employees.

While talk of flatline growth dominated media responses to Apple's financial results yesterday, the massive growth of Apple's cloud-based services appeared to go largely unnoticed.

In 2012, reports iPodNN, the number of iCloud users grew from 85 million to over 250 million. iTunes subscribers have topped 500 million, generating a record $2.1 billion profit for the quarter.

iMessage has also proven to be a hugely popular service, with users sending over two billion messages a day from over 500 million devices, with the total iMessage count now having surpassed 450 billion. Apple CEO Tim Cook addressed the focus on online and web services during yesterday's conference call:

In terms of other services, we feel fantastic about how we're doing. In Notification Center, we've now sent over 4 trillion notifications, and this is mind-blowing. As Peter mentioned in his opening comment, for iMessage we've now sent over 450 billion and are currently sending those over 2 billion per day. With Game Center, we've got over 200 million registered users. We have 800,000 apps on the App Store with over 40 billion downloads. And so I feel really, really great about it. There is obviously more stuff we can do and you can bet we're thinking about all of it.

Cook has repeatedly referred to iCloud as a "strategy for the next decade" for Apple. He has also characterized the increasing reliance and trust consumers place on cloud-based storage and services as "truly profound" and "a fundamental shift" in the way content is accessed.

After reporting record-breaking quarterly revenue and profit earlier today, Apple's stock has taken a 10% tumble in after hours trading. Apple posted a $13.1 billion profit for the quarter this year compared to a $13.06 billion profit in the same quarter of last year, yielding flat growth year over year.

The flat growth, as pointed out by Apple, is largely because manufacturing costs have risen, even as revenue has risen 18%. The New York Times notes that analysts were worried that about Apple's profit margins, even after Apple warned that a significant overhaul of its product line would mean high manufacturing costs in the early lives of the products.

The results arrived with an unusual level of anticipation, even for a company as high-profile as Apple, because of anxiety among some investors about Apple’s ability to sustain its growth and create new hit products. Apple’s stock has lost about a quarter of its value since September, erasing more than $170 billion of its market value.

Business Insider notes that even though Apple's holiday quarter in 2012 had a week less than it did in 2011 that sales growth still wouldn't be at the point that it was.

Apple's 10% stock decline gives it a current market cap of $463.49 billion and a loss of nearly $50 billion in market capitalization from worried investors. Despite analysts' and investors' worries of year-over-year growth, The Wall Street Journal's Tom Gara notes that Apple's losses in market cap today were roughly equal the value of two Research in Motions and two Nokias.

During today's quarterly results call for the first fiscal quarter of 2013, Peter Oppenheimer mentioned that the company focused on establishing a new operating segment of Greater China, including Mainland China, Hong Kong, and Taiwan

"We have established a new operating segment for China, given the contribution of that region to our business," said Oppenheimer.

The company has adjusted how it reports revenue for separate geographic regions because of the significant sales of both hardware and software in China during the last couple of years. China was responsible for $6.8 billion of Apple's revenue during the last quarter. Overall revenue in China is up 67%.

While Apple experienced strong iPhone growth overall, selling 47 million iPhones compared to 37 million in the year-ago quarter, it saw the most significant growth in China, which is up more than 100% year over year. Despite a late launch of the iPad, it was also noted to be successful in the country.

In terms of the geographic distribution, we saw our highest growth in China. It was into the triple digits, which was higher than the market there. We're extremely pleased.

It is clear that China is our second largest region. And there is a lot of potential there.

Apple opened four new stores in the Greater China area during 2012, and when asked about China during the question and answer section, Cook reiterated plans to continue to expand on the 11 stores that it has in the country, saying that Apple had "many more" stores to open.

Tim Cook spent a portion of January in China, meeting with both government officials and representatives from China Mobile, the country's largest mobile carrier. During the visit, Cook was interviewed by Sina Technology, where he emphasized Apple's efforts to raise its profile in the country.

During today's Financial Results call, Apple CEO Tim Cook announced that 36 additional carriers will be providing LTE connectivity for the iPhone and the iPad next week.

"Next week," said Tim Cook, "we're adding 36 more carriers for LTE support. These carriers will be in countries that we are not currently supporting LTE."

While Cook did not name all 36 carriers that would be getting LTE, he did mention that they are in regions like Italy, Denmark, Switzerland, the Philippines, and the Middle East. Currently, 24 carriers offer LTE for the iPhone and the iPad, in countries like the United States, Australia, South Korea, the U.K., Germany, Canada, and Japan.

Apple has been slow to roll out LTE connectivity, leading to complaints over the "4G" in the third generation iPad's name when it was released. Apple later changed it to the iPad Wi-Fi + Cellular in response.

When asked if the slow pace of LTE rollouts has had an impact on iPhone sales, Cook skirted the question, but he did mention the plans to roll out LTE in the aforementioned countries during the next week, and had this to say: "We feel really good about the situation we are in, particularly with these adds next week."

During today's Q1 2013 Financial Results conference call, Apple CEO Tim Cook fielded questions about Apple's results and plans. As usual, Apple was unwilling to provide any specific details about their future plans.

Cook was asked about the importance of market share preservation and whether or not holding their smartphone marketshare was a priority in 2013:

The most important thing to Apple is to make the best products in the world. We aren't interested in revenue for revenue's sake. We could put the Apple brand on a lot of things and sell a lot more stuff. We only want to make the best products. We've been able to build market share and have a great track record with iPod of doing different products at different price points. I wouldn't view those as mutually exclusive as some might. We're focused on making great products that enrich lives.

As for Apple's plans for 2013, Cook, as usual, acknowledges that Apple is working on a number of new products and he shares his optimism on those:

We're working on some incredible stuff. The pipeline is chock full. We feel great about what we've got in store.

With regard to the Apple TV, Cook reiterated it was an area that they had intense interest in:

This is an area of intense interest for us and remains that. I tend to believe that there is a lot we can contribute in this space and we continue to pull the string and see where it leads us. Don't want to be more specific.

Cook also revealed that the Apple TV had sold over 2 million units this past quarter -- 60% year over year.

Finally, Cook emphasized that they felt that the "halo" effect was still in full force. As customers buy one Apple product, they tend to buy more.

"The other thing for us, maybe not for others, if somebody buys an iPad mini and it's their first Apple product, we have great experience through the years — if someone buys their first Apple product, these people buy another Apple product. It's the halo effect, as we termed it, that we saw with the iPod and the Mac — we've seen some of that with the iPad as well. I see it as a huge opportunity."

Tim Cook broadly addressed recent rumors that Apple may have cut iPhone 5 orders on weak demand. That particular rumor gained significant attention, resulting in a notable dip in Apple's stock price.

Cook was careful not to address any particular rumor, but warned against trying to interpret single data points, even if they happened to be accurate:

Months of rumors about order cuts and so forth, so let me take a moment to comment on these. No comment on any particular rumor.

I suggest its good to question the accuracy of any kind of rumor about build plans. Even if a particular data point were factual, it would be impossible to interpret that data point as to what it meant to our business. The supply chain is very complex and we have multiple sources for things. Yields can vary, supplier performance can vary. There is an inordinate long list of things that can make any single data point not a great proxy for what is going on.

Cook made the comments during today's Q1 Results conference call.

Today's quarterly results call revealed that Apple's Mac sales are down 16% compared to last year. Apple sold just 312,000 Macs per week compared to 371,000 per week during the same time period a year ago.

Peter Oppenheimer noted that Apple has experienced significant constraints on the new iMacs, and was only able to ship them during December. Without these constraints, he says, Mac sales would have been higher.

IDC estimates the global personal computer market contracted by 6% during the December quarter. We introduced the new 13-inch MacBook Pro retina display as well as our stunning new iMacs in October. As we projected a quarter ago, we were significantly constrained with respect to the new iMacs and were only able to ship them for the final month of the December quarter. We believe our Mac sales would have been much higher absent those constraints.

Apple was only able to provide 3 to 4 weeks of inventory, below its target of 4 to 5 weeks. Apple's newest iMacs have been plagued with production issues, mainly due to a new lamination process used for the displays.

Cook further addressed this in the Question and Answer section.

The best way to answer this is to look at the previous year. The difference is $1.1 billion from last year. iMacs were down by 700k units year over year. As you remember, we announced new iMacs late in October. Announced they would ship in November and December. Did ship by those dates. Limited weeks of ramping on those products during the quarter. Significant constraints on the iMac at the end of the quarter. Sales would have been materially higher without those constraints. Tried to share this on the conference call in October.

If you look at last year, we had 14 weeks in the quarter last year. 13 weeks this year. Channel inventory was down from the beginning of the quarter by more than 100k units. Didn't have the iMacs in channel. These factors bridge more than the difference between this year's sales and last year's.

Cook also mentioned a few other minor factors, including the weak PC market and the impressive sales of the iPad. Apple sold more than 23 million iPads, and Cook said that some cannibalization was almost certainly a factor.

Apple today announced financial results for the fourth calendar quarter of 2012 and first fiscal quarter of 2013. For the quarter, Apple posted revenue of $54.5 billion and net quarterly profit of $13.1 billion, or $13.81 per diluted share, compared to revenue of $46.33 billion and net quarterly profit of $13.06 billion, or $13.87 per diluted share in the year-ago quarter. Apple's quarterly profit and revenue were both all-time company records, but Wall Street analysts had projected even slightly higher numbers.

Gross margin for the quarter was 38.6 percent, compared to 44.7 percent in the year-ago quarter, and international sales accounted for 61 percent of revenue. Apple also declared another dividend payment of $2.65 per share, payable on February 14 to shareholders as of the close of trading on February 11. The company currently holds $137.1 billion in cash and marketable securities.

Quarterly iPhone unit sales reached 47.8 million, compared to 37 million in the year-ago quarter and the company sold 22.9 million iPads, up from 15.4 million in the year-ago quarter. Apple sold 4.1 million Macintosh computers, compared to 5.2 million in the year-ago period, as well as 12.7 million iPods, down from 15.4 million a year ago. Apple set new sales records for both iPhone and iPad sales.

“We’re thrilled with record revenue of over $54 billion and sales of over 75 million iOS devices in a single quarter,” said Tim Cook, Apple’s CEO. “We’re very confident in our product pipeline as we continue to focus on innovation and making the best products in the world.”

Apple's guidance for the second quarter of fiscal 2013 includes expected revenue of $41-43 billion.

Apple will provide live streaming of its Q1 2013 financial results conference call at 2:00 PM Pacific, and MacRumors will update this story with coverage of the conference call highlights.

Despite the record revenue and earnings, Apple's stock is currently down nearly 5% in after-hours trading after falling short of analysts' expectations and issuing weaker guidance than many had expected.

Conference Call Highlights, Q&A Follows

Tim Cook:

- We are incredibly pleased to report an extraordinary quarter. New records for iPhone and iPad sales. No technology company has ever reported these kinds of results. Most prolific period of innovation and new products in Apple's history. New products in every category we make in the past few months.
- One team to surprise and delight our customers. Part of Cook's job is to preserve corporate culture. No greater reward than seeing how customers love our products. Our fundamentals: people, strategy and pipeline, ecosystem and retail stores will serve us well.
- Tomorrow is anniversary of Mac revolution. 1984, Jobs introduced Macintosh at shareholder's meeting in Cupertino. We've come a long way.
- We don't measure success just by the numbers. The most important thing to us is that our customers love our products, not just buy them. Laser focused on unprecedented customer experience.
- Sold more than 500 million iOS devices, more than 10 per second last quarter.

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Research firm Gartner today shared its estimates of global semiconductor purchases for 2012, finding that Samsung has retaken the title Apple had gained in 2011 when it leapt over both Samsung and HP. Samsung (28.9% growth) and Apple (13.6% growth) registered as the biggest winners in 2012, as the overall market declined by 3% with Sony (1.9%) and Lenovo (0.3%) being the only other top-ten companies showing positive performance.

"Although Samsung and Apple continue to go from strength to strength, other leading electronic equipment makers fared less well, and six of the top 10 reduced their demand in 2012," said Masatsune Yamaji, principal research analyst at Gartner. "In addition to a weak macroeconomic situation, a dramatic change in consumer demand contributed to a reduction in semiconductor demand in 2012.

Yamaji pointed to the strong shift to mobile devices as a primary reason for the overall decline in the semiconductor market, with traditional computers that require significantly higher semiconductor content experiencing relatively poor sales in the face of smartphone and tablet popularity.

Samsung and Apple together now account for over 15% of the world's semiconductor market, up from roughly 12% in 2011.

Gartner's numbers measure the total silicon content of all products designed by Apple and each of its competitors, a metric known as Design TAM. This is distinct from Purchasing TAM, which would attribute to a given company only the amount actually purchased by the company. As an example of the difference between the two metrics, semiconductors purchased by a third-party manufacturing partner would generally count toward the primary company's Design TAM but not its Purchasing TAM.

Philip Elmer-Dewitt has assembled his quarterly list of analyst predictions ahead of Apple's earnings report this afternoon. The list includes estimates from 67 analysts: 28 "independent" and 39 "institutional" who work for large investment houses or research organizations.

As usual, the independents are much more bullish than the institutional analysts. The independent consensus expects earnings per share (EPS) of $15.11 on revenue of $58.84 billion. The institutional consensus is EPS of $13.45 on $54.74 billion in revenue. Across all analysts, the median expectation is for earnings of $14.20 on $55.96 billion in revenue, a year-over-year increase of 10% and 30% respectively. 2011's holiday quarter was the strongest in the company's history.

Last quarter the company earned $8.2 billion in profit on revenue of $36 billion. For this quarter, Apple issued guidance of $52 billion in revenue with profits of $11.75 per share. The company has, in the past, exceeded its guidance by a significant margin.

Apple will announce its earnings for the first fiscal quarter of 2013 (fourth calendar quarter of 2012) and host a conference call regarding the release this afternoon at 5:00 PM Eastern / 2:00 PM Pacific. The earnings release itself typically comes in around 4:30 PM Eastern. MacRumors will have live coverage of the proceedings.