Aaron Adams’s Blowhard Blog

Today Apple announced a $61 million profit on $2.014 billion in revenue, up 30% from a year ago. So what’s all this I’ve heard about price gouging? And how does this set us up for Apple’s next quarterly report? The imminenet death of Apple is upon us!

I am not an accountant, but if I remember anything from Economics 101, dividing profit by revenue equals profit percentage. So $61 million / $2.104 billion = 3%. Overall, Apple is making about 3% profit across its product lines. That’s funny, because I’ve read many times that the reason Apple has high prices is because it’s gouging its customers, making an inordinate profit that they selfishly stuff into their pockets to blow their nose with. There may be factors I’m not considering here, but since when is a 3% profit unfair?

Most people who pay attention know that Apple ran out of iMac G4 machines to sell, so since they had nothing to lose, they stated that new iMacs would be introduced in September. Apple placed the blame for late new model iMacs on IBM, which is apparently having a problem producing enough G5 chips to meet demand for PowerMacs and XServes, much less new iMacs. All of this means that, come Apple’s Q4 filing, there will be a giant hole in their revenue stream: A couple of months without sales of their primary consumer desktop means serious financial pain.

Apple’s Q4 conference call isn’t going to be pretty. Most, if not all, of their numbers are going to take a sharp spike downwards. All of the usual worms will crawl out of the woodwork to predict the imminent death of Apple for every reason you can imagine, or can’t imagine. So I’d like to beat them to the punch: Apple is doooooomed! DOOOOOOMED!

Think I’m talking crazy talk? I’ve had people try to explain to me why a debt-free company is a dying company. I’ve also had some ignorant people explain to me that having almost $5 billion in cash in the bank is a sign of a company’s mismanagement and unhealthiness. You know the saying… Apple, going out of business for more than 20 years.