MacRumors

After today's record breaking results, Apple will be holding a company-wide Town Hall for employees discussing some "exciting new things going on at Apple." Tim Cook sent a company-wide email to employees, as posted by 9to5Mac:

Thanks to everyone’s hard work, we’re off to a great start in 2012. Last week in New York we launched a groundbreaking initiative for education with iBooks textbooks, and today we reported the strongest quarter in Apple’s history.Please join me tomorrow morning at 10 a.m. in Town Hall. We’ll review our record-setting results and discuss some exciting new things going on at Apple.The meeting will be broadcast live to many sites in Cupertino and other Apple locations. Please check AppleWeb for details.

Tim

These town hall meetings are restricted to Apple employees and it's unlikely Cook will announce anything too exciting. However, details of the event invariably leak out, and may show Apple's changes and direction internally. The Town Hall is taking place on Wed, Jan 25th at 10am Pacific.

Apple today announced financial results for the fourth calendar quarter of 2011 and first fiscal quarter of 2012. For the quarter, Apple posted revenue of $46.33 billion and net quarterly profit of $13.06 billion, or $13.87 per diluted share, compared to revenue of $26.7 billion and net quarterly profit of $6 billion, or $6.43 per diluted share, in the year-ago quarter. Gross margin was 44.7 percent, compared to 38.5 percent in the year-ago quarter, and international sales accounted for 58 percent of the quarter's revenue. Apple's quarterly profit and revenue were both company records.

Apple shipped 5.2 million Macintosh computers during the quarter, a unit increase of 26 percent over the year-ago quarter. Quarterly iPhone unit sales reached 37.04 million, up 128 percent from the year-ago quarter, and the company sold 15.4 million iPods during the quarter, representing 21 percent unit decline over the year-ago quarter. Apple also sold 15.43 million iPads during the quarter, up 111 percent over the year-ago quarter. Apple set new company records for iPhone, iPad, and Mac sales during the quarter.

“We’re thrilled with our outstanding results and record-breaking sales of iPhones, iPads and Macs,” said Tim Cook, Apple’s CEO. “Apple’s momentum is incredibly strong, and we have some amazing new products in the pipeline.”

Apple's guidance for the second quarter of fiscal 2012 includes expected revenue of $32.5 billion and earnings per diluted share of $8.50.

Apple will provide live streaming of its Q1 2012 financial results conference call at 2:00 PM Pacific, and MacRumors will update this story with coverage of the conference call highlights.

Conference Call Highlights

- Highest quarterly revenue and earnings in Apple history.
- Numerous new records for quarterly iPhone, iPad, and Mac Sales
- Extremely pleased with momentum of the business
- Sales aided by inclusion of 14th week in the quarter.
- Net income increased 118% year-over-year, equal to half of net income generated over all of fiscal 2011
- Set new records for desktops and portables, up 26% year-over-year versus 0% growth for entire PC industry

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Earlier this month, Verizon Wireless Chief Financial Officer Fran Shammo noted that the carrier had activated 4.2 million iPhones during the fourth quarter of 2011, more than doubling the previous quarter's sales on the momentum of the iPhone 4S launch and potentially signaling a blockbuster quarter for Apple in the iPhone market.

Verizon today officially announced its earnings for the fourth quarter of 2011, revealing in a conference call that the company actually activated 4.3 million iPhones during the quarter. With the carrier reporting total smartphone sales of 7.7 million units, the iPhone represented approximately 55% of the carrier's smartphone sales for the quarter.

Smartphones now account for 44% of Verizon's postpaid customer phone base, up from 39% in the previous quarter. That strong growth in smartphones such as the iPhone significantly reduced the carrier's margins in its wireless business during the quarter as absorbed the heavy upfront subsidies paid to manufacturers for the devices. Verizon will recover those costs over the length of customers' contracts, making carriers willing to take short term hits to profitability to lock in smartphone customers on lucrative service contracts.

Back in June of last year, IHS iSuppli reported that Apple had become the world's largest buyer of semiconductors in 2010, jumping past HP and Samsung to top the list with $17.5 billion in spending. Apple's lead was expected to grow in 2011 on continued strength of the iPhone, iPad, and MacBook Air, all of which contain substantial NAND flash memory, which has become a primary driver of semiconductor markets due to the booming mobile device landscape.

Research firm Gartner is out today with a new report that appears to utilize a somewhat different methodology in calculating semiconductor expenditures but which now comes to the same conclusion as IHS Suppli's earlier report. According to Gartner, Apple became the world's largest semiconductor customer in 2011 as measured by total silicon content in all products designed by Apple and its competitors, known as Design TAM.

Gartner pegs Apple's year-over-year growth for 2011 at 34.6%, easily topping the growth of other top semiconductor customers and allowing it to leapfrog Samsung and a sliding HP for the top spot in the rankings. According to the report, semiconductor purchases for Apple's products came in at $17.3 billion in 2011, ahead of Samsung's $16.7 billion and HP's $16.6 billion purchases.

iSuppli's report from last year highlighted the vast differences in Apple's and HP's markets, with Apple's semiconductor usage being driven by mobile devices and HP's by traditional computer products. Gartner notes that mobile devices and solid-state drives are indeed now the major drivers of semiconductor usage.

"The major growth drivers in 2011 were smartphones, media tablets and solid-state drives (SSDs)," said Masatsune Yamaji, principal research analyst at Gartner. "Those companies that gained share in the smartphone market, such as Apple, Samsung Electronics and HTC, increased their semiconductor demand, while those who lost market share in this segment, such as Nokia and LG Electronics, decreased their semiconductor demand.

Gartner distinguishes Design TAM 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.

Details of Adam Lashinsky's new Inside Apple book set to debut tomorrow continue to surface, and while some of the ideas behind the company's "Apple University" program for training the next generation of executives were previously disclosed in Lashinsky's original Fortune piece on the topic and in a Los Angeles Times article last October, the new book takes a more extensive look at the concept.

As had been previously disclosed, Apple in 2008 hired Yale School of Management dean Joel Podolny to head up the Apple University initiative on management training. Several other professors, including Harvard business historian Richard Tedlow, came on board in consulting roles to help develop the curriculum. Classes were primarily taught by Apple executives, with guidance offered by Podolny and the other professors.

Examples of the case studies being taught at Apple University include the story of how Apple crafted its retail strategy from scratch and Apple's approach to commissioning factories in China. Wherever possible the cases shine a light on mishaps, the thinking being that a company has the most to learn from its mistakes.

Tedlow quietly retired from Harvard last year, and is now working full-time for Apple to add his expertise on U.S. business history to the Apple University curriculum. His lectures reportedly draw upon crises and missteps experienced by other major businesses, events which offer lessons to help Apple's future leaders avoid similar pitfalls and learn how to respond when faced with adversity.

[H]e is teaching them business lessons about other companies that the Apple executives can apply to their own situations. For instance, Tedlow has lectured Apple's PR staff on the Tylenol tampering crisis of 1982 and how the McNeil Consumer Products unit of Johnson & Johnson responded. He taught a class for executives about the fallen grocery store chain A&P as an example of what happened to a company that once dominated its field. Quipped an attendee: "We were all trying to figure out what A&P had to do with Apple."

Lashinsky notes it that will be interesting to watch how the company that shunned traditional business school business practices under Steve Jobs evolves over time now that academics have been brought in to help mold the next generation of Apple leaders. That evolution will, however, likely take years before it becomes apparent to the public.

From an advance copy of Adam Lashinsky's upcoming Inside Apple book, NetworkWorld notes an interesting bit of information about how Apple approaches retail packaging.

Perhaps it should be no surprise, given the elegance of some of Apple's product packages, but Apple is said to have a secretive packaging room where a package designer goes through hundreds of iterations to find the right combination:

One after another, the designer created and tested an endless series of arrows, colors, and tapes for a tiny tab designed to show the consumer where to pull back the invisible, full-bleed sticker adhered to the top of the clear iPod box. Getting it just right was this particular designer's obsession.

What's more, it wasn't just about one box. The tabs were placed so that when Apple's factory packed multiple boxes for shipping to retail stores, there was a natural negative space between the boxes that protected and preserved the tab.

NetworkWorld also points back to an old internal video created by Microsoft's own packaging team as a humorous look at branding and packaging issues for marketers. The video imagines if Microsoft were to redesign the iPod retail packaging:

Apple's obsession with even the product packaging is a reflection on Steve Jobs' views of the matter. Both Steve Jobs and Jonathan Ive are known to have spent time on the packaging of their products. From Walter Issacson's Steve Jobs biography:

"Steve and I spend a lot of time on the packaging," said Ive. "I love the process of unpacking something. You design a ritual of unpacking to make the product feel special. Packaging can be theater, it can create a story."

In the upcoming Inside Apple book by Adam Lashinsky, it's revealed that Steve Jobs had expressed interest and subsequently met with the CEO of Lytro, the makers the first light field camera. The relevant book quote posted by 9to5Mac states:

The company’s CEO, Ren Ng, a brilliant computer scientist with a PhD from Stanford, immediately called Jobs, who picked up the phone and quickly said, “if you’re free this afternoon maybe we would could get together.” Ng, who is thirty-two, hurried to Palo Alto, showed Jobs a demo of Lytro’s technology, discussed cameras and product design with him, and, at Jobs’s request, agreed to send him an email outlining three things he’d like Lytro to do with Apple.

Lytro received a lot of press last year when the first of its light field cameras went on sale in October. The product even received Popular Science's 2011 Innovation of the Year.

Light field cameras are a different take on photography by capturing "the entire light field" and saving all that information into a single file. Photographers can then edit the file afterwards in a number of unique ways -- including refocusing the image. This video walks through this unique ability:

(Video removed)

One of the limitations in the early light field cameras is a relatively low resolution. The first Lytro camera produces final photos of only 1.2 megapixels (1,080x1,080). The cameras also don't take any video and start at $399 for an 8GB model. The camera carries an elongated form factor that seems to be a result of the unusual optics required.

Given the hype surrounding the technology, it's perhaps no surprise that Steve Jobs found interest in meeting with the young company. That meeting, however, is getting special attention due to the fact that Walter Isaacson had said that Jobs wanted to reinvent television, textbooks and photography.

Apple just released their first digital textbooks for the iPad, and is expected to get into the television space. Apple's future goals for photography, however, remain unclear. Apple includes a digital camera its iPhones and has made progressive improvements in camera quality over the past few generations. While Apple no longer makes a standalone digital camera, they were one of the first to product a consumer targeted digital camera back in 1994.

Given the popularity of smartphones and the subsequent decline of point and shoot camera popularity, we'd expect any future Apple movement into photography would be centered around the iPhone.

In his biography, Steve Jobs was so infuriated by Android's similarities to the iPhone that he swore to spend all the money Apple had in the bank to defeat the platform. Newsweek columnist Dan Lyons passes along a rumor that Apple has spent $100 million in legal fees on just its first set of claims against HTC.

Who knows if it’s true, but if so, Apple didn’t get a lot for its money.

[...]

[Against HTC,] Apple started out with 10 patents — presumably its best ones — and ended up with a tiny victory on just one. Was that worth $100 million?

Apple certainly can afford the legal fees, and shows no sign of letting up.

[...]

HTC has two claims pending against Apple with the ITC as well, the first one due for a decision next month and the second in April 2013. And then there are other claims, all over the world, against HTC, Samsung and Motorola.

But, Lyons notes, HTC, Samsung and Motorola are all countersuing Apple with their own patent claims and Apple already lost a major lawsuit to Nokia and had to pay the Finnish company not insignificant royalties its own patent infringement.

Apple has hired some of the best -- and most expensive -- patent litigators in the world and, after several years of legal wrangling (and many more to come), doesn't have much to show for it.

Lyons points out that whether the $100 million figure is accurate doesn't really matter. Apple and all the other cell makers are simply jockeying for position and trying to gain leverage for what is likely an inevitable legal settlement. "In that sense, whatever Apple is spending on legal fees is probably money well spent," notes Lyons.

Tomorrow, Apple will announce the most recent quarter's additions to its cash pile, which totaled more than $80 billion three months ago. Apple can easily afford many more years of massive legal bills.

Philip Elmer-Dewitt has assembled his list of analyst expectations ahead of Apple's quarterly earnings report Tuesday afternoon. The list includes estimates from 17 "independent" analysts and 34 "affiliated" analysts who work for large investment houses or research organizations.

As usual, the independent analysts are much more bullish than the affiliated analysts. The independent consensus expects earnings per share (EPS) of $12.01 on revenue of $43.14 billion. The institutional consensus is EPS of $10.19 on $39.23 billion in revenue.

Click through to Elmer-DeWitt's post at Fortune to see the full-size chart.

Last quarter Apple announced it had broken $100 billion in sales for fiscal 2011, the first time it had breached that figure, and posted $6.62 billion in profit on revenue of $28.27 billion. For the first fiscal quarter of 2012, Apple has issued guidance of $37 billion in revenue with profits of $9.30 per diluted share.

Apple's best quarter ever was fiscal Q311 when it posted $7.31 billion in profit on sales of $28.57 billion. It appears Apple will solidly beat those numbers this quarter, posting its best results ever.

Apple will announce its earnings for the first fiscal quarter of 2012 (fourth calendar quarter of 2011) and host a conference call regarding the release on Tuesday January 24th at 5:00 PM Eastern / 2:00 PM Pacific. The earnings release itself typically comes in around 4:30 PM Eastern.

We've been following the development of Apple's first Dutch retail store for some time now, as issues over historic preservation have slowed the timetable for construction at the landmark Hirsch building in Amsterdam. But things now appear to be coming together as iPhoneclub.nl [Google translation] and One More Thing [Google translation] offer a number of details on plans for the store, which seems to be headed for a February 18 opening.

According to reports, much of the store staff is currently in training at the Amsterdam Hilton, while Geniuses have been trained at a number of UK stores. A third-party company responsible for the maintenance services on the store once it is opened is reportedly set to begin work in mid-February, with One More Thing specifically claiming that the opening will take place on February 18.

Among the interesting developments in recent days was a windstorm over the weekend that pulled away some of the coverings from the exterior of the store to reveal the spiral glass staircase that customers will see front and center upon entering the two-level store.

Floor plans obtained by One More Thing show product displays and a massive 20-seat Genius Bar on the first level of the store, with additional product displays, third-party accessories, training and set-up, and a Briefing Room filling out the second floor. The store is topped with a pyramid-shaped glass roof over a portion of the sales floor, with the second floor left open as a void to allow the light to filter down to the first floor and increase the store's openness. Offices for Apple's operations in the region will be located on upper floors of the building.

Sony today announced (via Macworld UK) the launch of new image sensor technology that the company expects will help improve performance and shrink the size of cameras on mobile devices by later this year. The new back-illuminated complementary metal–oxide–semiconductor (CMOS) image sensor utilizes a pixel section layered directly onto the sensor's circuitry, significantly reducing the sensor size from the previous design that utilized pixel and circuit sections side-by-side on a substrate layer.

This image sensor layers the pixel section containing formations of back-illuminated structure pixels onto chips containing the circuit section for signal processing, which is in place of supporting substrates for conventional back-illuminated CMOS image sensors. This structure achieves further enhancement in image quality, superior functionalities and a more compact size that will lead to enhanced camera evolution.

With sampling set to begin in March, the new stacked CMOS sensor includes built-in signal processing technology and utilizes the company's "RGBW Coding" that adds white-light sensors to the traditional red, green and blue, offering better low-light camera performance. Enhanced high dynamic range (HDR) technology will also improve the sensor's movie capabilities in bright-light situations.

Apple had utilized OmniVision Technologies as its image sensor supplier on its mobile devices, but Sony was able attract at least part of Apple's business with the new 8-megapixel sensor on the iPhone 4S. With its new image sensor technology, which is set to enter mass production in the fall and begin appearing in products late this year or early next year, Sony is clearly looking to remain at the forefront of the booming mobile device camera market.

According to new survey data from the Pew Internet & American Life Project (via VentureBeat), the share of U.S. adults owning a tablet device nearly doubled during the most recent holiday season, moving from 10% to 19% between mid-December and early January. While the introduction of Amazon's Kindle Fire certainly played a significant role in the tablet growth, the news still bodes well for Apple's iPad performance during the quarter.

These findings are striking because they come after a period from mid-2011 into the autumn in which there was not much change in the ownership of tablets and e-book readers. However, as the holiday gift-giving season approached the marketplace for both devices dramatically shifted. In the tablet world, Amazon’s Kindle Fire and Barnes and Noble’s Nook Tablet were introduced at considerably cheaper prices than other tablets.

Apple's iPad dominated tablet sales following its early 2010 debut as competitors struggled to find traction in the marketplace, but the Kindle Fire has been seen as perhaps the best-equipped product to take on the iPad given its much lower pricing ($199) and its integration with Amazon's significant services and large customer base. But while the Kindle Fire is selling well according to estimates, its effect on iPad sales has been the subject of considerable debate given the significant differences in hardware and target markets between the two devices.

Apple is of course rumored to be introducing the iPad 3 in the coming months, amid reports that it will continue to offer the iPad 2 at a lower entry-level price. Even so, Apple will be unlikely to match or closely approach the Kindle Fire's $199 pricing given the iPad's larger size and differences in the two companies' approaches to the tablet market. Apple focuses on profitability for its hardware products with content providing a supporting role at much smaller margins, while Amazon is willing to sell hardware essentially at cost in order to support profitability in its massive shopping and content offerings.

Apple is also pushing for greater adoption of the iPad in the education market with its just-launched iBooks Textbooks initiative. Envisioning a future in which students carry all of their textbooks in the form of interactive iBookstore downloads on iPads, the company is seeking to drive innovation and engagement in education while making the iPad the tablet of choice for students of all ages.

AllThingsD reports on a new research note from Global Equities Research analyst Trip Chowdhry claiming that customers downloaded approximately 350,000 iBooks Textbooks from the iBookstore over the first three days of availability. That performance was accompanied by over 90,000 downloads of Apple's iBooks Author app from the Mac App Store.

If those numbers are accurate, Apple’s textbook effort would seem to be off to a good start. Which is good news for everyone involved — particularly textbook publishers, who stand to make more money on books sold through iBooks than those sold at retail.

With only eight iBooks Textbook titles available at launch, Apple and publishers are only beginning to scratch the surface of the digital textbook market. But it is unclear just how many of those 350,000 downloads were paid purchases, with seven of the eight titles carrying Apple's maximum $14.99 price tag.

The eighth title, E.O. Wilson's Life on Earth, is available for free, although it currently contains only the first two chapters of the book, and presumably the title accounted for a significant number of the total downloads as curious users looked to test drive the new offering. Paid titles are also required to offer free samples, and Chowdhry apparently did not mention whether these are counted as "downloads" by his tracking method.

The KAIST Institute of Information Technology Convergence has posted this video demonstrating their patented eBook interface prototype.

The prototype is implemented on an Apple iPad but reportedly uses private Apple APIs, according to the video description. The use of private APIs would prevent the app from being approved for the App Store, but the video shows a number of novel ways to navigate eBooks besides the simple "page flip" motion found on Apple's iBooks app.

The new gestures shown include:

- Page Flipping, by spreading pages and then flipping through
- Page Flipping with finger bookmarking
- Multiple page turning using multiple fingers
- Faster swipes turning multiple page
- Longer presses, then swiping can turn multiple pages
- Writing the page number

Interactive eBooks have been a big topic of discussion over this past week, since Apple's launch of iBooks 2 with their new electronic textbooks. (via Reddit)