AAPL Q1 2015 Earnings, $18 Billion and 74.5 ******s sold

AAPL made a nice jump from last week. $118 a share today, was $112 last week.

 

I have always followed the Apple threads here in the forum, ever since I heard someone say that they are going to be the first trillion dollar company in the world.
I myself would rather buy a Samsung phone to be honest...
But still hoping to make some money with Apple in the future, if the opportunity is there.

Also, whenever I ear of Apple I immediately think of this Bill Burr joke:

[video=youtube;FmbwR9J6-Yw]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FmbwR9J6-Yw[/video]

Sorry if this is too off-topic, but I just love this guy's material.

 

Very nice stats from Apple. I gotta admit, I'm not the biggest fan of their products, but they sure as hell know how to make a profit for their shareholders

 

It will be hard to beat Apple, at least selling stuff in the USA. Apple is crazy about lawsuits and buries any upstart company in legal expenses as soon as they are on the radar. Apple patents and copyrights EVERYTHING and at the slightest whiff that someone is touching one of their patents, they will just force you to spend everything you have to defend yourself. The really big court battles make the news, like vs Samsung.. but what people don´t see are the 100´s of lawsuits the file every year against small companies.

 

You're totally right, Apple DOES seem very obsessed with patents and whatnot. Every week there's like a new news piece about an Apple patent case it seems. Then again, if it's making them money and is all aboveboard then I don't really see it as a problem

 

For investing, there is no problem short-term. It greatly favors Apple what they are doing, they snuff out competition before it becomes competition.

There is a potential longterm problem though, and that is just the techies are going to rebel. So far Apple has only ruffled a few feathers with all their lawsuits, but if they make even a small mistake and sue someone ´special´ the hardcore tech community will turn on them, especially the tech media.

The reason for this is that many already think that Apple is hurting innovation in the same way that Microsoft did in the early 1990s. Small companies innovate, large companies only make incremental changes to their existing products. In 20 years, operating systems haven´t had major breakthroughs like that should have, mainly because of Microsoft. The thought is that smartphones are going to do the same thing.. nothing truly innovative is going to happen, they are just joing to get a tiny bit better every year.. just slightly enough to where you want to upgrade... but nothing drastic is ever going to be done with them. ******4 will be ******5 and in 20 years we will have ******25 which is not significantly different than the ******5.

The problem is the smart people. The truly visionary people do not want to go work for Apple or Microsoft, they want to build a company themselves. Steve Jobs and Bill Gates would have never graduated college and went to work for a company like Apple or Microsoft. So what you have now is the middling tech guys ( not the best) working at Apple and Microsoft pushing out mediocre upgrades while the best of the best (our modern Jobs and Gates) are in courtrooms dealing with Apple lawyers.

******s are great, and they were truly innovate at the time, but if you want to see where Apple is heading, look at Apple Maps.

 

haha, a good problem to have. I used to debate that concept myself. The whole idea that ´what happens if a company´s price grows so much that it becomes an uncomfortably large part of my portfolio. it is hard to sell myself on the idea of buying a company I have less confidence in only because I want to diversify. There is nothing that I see that makes me think apple is not going to double again in the next 30 months. If I started over with an empty portfolio, it would be hard for me to name many companies that I would buy instead of Apple, so it is hard for me to imagine selling it now.