Graham Spencer

1054 posts on MacStories since January 2011

Former MacStories contributor.
graham@macstories.net

Apple Announces Q4 2015 Earnings Call For October 27

Apple’s Investor Relations website was yesterday updated to note that Apple’s fourth quarter earnings call for fiscal year 2015 (July, August, September) will be held on Tuesday, October 27. As is usual, Apple will provide a live webcast of the conference call.

FY 15 Fourth Quarter Results
Apple’s conference call to discuss fourth fiscal quarter results is scheduled for Tuesday, October 27, 2015 at 2:00 p.m. PT / 5:00 p.m. ET.

Apple announced yesterday that it had sold a record 13 million units of the new iPhone 6s and iPhone 6s Plus. The rollout of the new iPhones is on track to be the fastest ever from Apple, and we’ll no doubt hear more about that on this upcoming earnings call.

In the third quarter of FY15, Apple posted revenue of $49.6 billion. The company sold 10.9 million iPads, 47.5 million iPhones, and 4.8 million Macs, earning a quarterly net profit of $10.7 billion.

As we have for previous earnings calls, MacStories will cover the conference call on our site’s homepage on October 27 starting at 2 PM PT, posting charts of the results, collecting key quotes from Apple executives and highlighting interesting Tweets from others.

iPhone 6s and iPhone 6s Plus Opening Weekend Sales Hit a Record 13 Million

Apple announced this morning that the iPhone 6s and iPhone 6s Plus has sold more than 13 million units over its opening weekend. The new iPhone went on sale last Friday in the United States, Australia, Canada, China, France, Germany, Hong Kong, Japan, New Zealand, Puerto Rico, Singapore, and the UK.

“Sales for iPhone 6s and iPhone 6s Plus have been phenomenal, blowing past any previous first weekend sales results in Apple’s history,” said Tim Cook, Apple’s CEO. “Customers’ feedback is incredible and they are loving 3D Touch and Live Photos, and we can’t wait to bring iPhone 6s and iPhone 6s Plus to customers in even more countries on October 9.”

13 million units sold over the opening weekend is a new record for iPhone sales. Last year Apple sold 10 million units of the iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus, whilst in 2013 Apple sold 9 million units of the iPhone 5s and iPhone 5c. In fact, Apple has consistently beaten their opening weekend iPhone sales every single year.

Second Wave of iPhone 6s Launch Countries Announced

Apple also announced today that the second wave of iPhone 6s and iPhone 6s Plus launch countries will get the device on October 9 and 10. Over those two days, the new iPhones will launch in 42 countries in this second wave, including Italy, Mexico, Russia, Spain and Taiwan.

The full list of countries:

iPhone 6s and iPhone 6s Plus will roll out worldwide to more than 40 additional countries and territories beginning October 9 including Andorra, Austria, Belgium, Bosnia, Bulgaria, Croatia, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, Greece, Greenland, Hungary, Iceland, Ireland, Isle of Man, Italy, Latvia, Liechtenstein, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Maldives, Mexico, Monaco, Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Russia, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland and Taiwan. On October 10, countries include Bahrain, Jordan, Kuwait, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and United Arab Emirates.

Read more

Instagram Hits 400 Million Users→

Instagram announced yesterday that they had hit the milestone of 400 million monthly active users:

We are thrilled to announce that the Instagram community has grown to more than 400 million strong. While milestones like this are important, what really excites us is the way that visual communication makes the world feel a little bit smaller to every one of us.

Our community has evolved to be even more global, with more than 75 percent living outside of the US. To all the new Instagrammers: welcome! Among the last 100 million to join, more than half live in Europe and Asia. The countries that added the most Instagrammers include Brazil, Japan and Indonesia.

I can’t believe its been nearly five years since Instagram launched, it really doesn’t feel like it’s been that long. But I was really surprised to remember that Facebook acquired Instagram in April 2012, when Instagram had “only” 40 million users. If I recall correctly, a lot of people thought Facebook was crazy to buy Instagram for $1 billion. Well, I think Facebook got the last laugh on that one, and as Forbes points out, Instagram now has more monthly active users than Twitter (316 million).

It’s been a few years since I updated my Instagram growth chart, so here’s an updated version.

Permalink

Apple’s iOS 9 News App Review: Broken News

Apple occasionally introduces new apps to iOS that come preinstalled on every device, and with iOS 9 they’ve done this again with the introduction of News. As you would expect from the name, News is, or at least tries to be, a one-stop shop for all your news needs. One way to think of News is a fusion of Google News (for the recommended articles), Flipboard (for the ability to follow publishers and topics), and Facebook’s Instant Articles (custom, gorgeous articles on mobile).

The News app was, to me at least, one of the features of iOS 9 that I was most looking forward to using – I even put that in writing. I was excited about the News app because reading news on an iPhone, although it has improved over time, can still be a frustrating experience jumping from app to app. The experience is even worse with many news websites which chew massive amounts of data and obscure the small display with a myriad of annoying ads. News, as it was demoed at WWDC, offered a promising alternative: a one-stop app that would deliver “the articles you want to read in a beautiful and uncluttered format, while respecting your privacy”.

Much like Apple’s past experiments in bringing news to iOS,1 the News app in iOS 9 fails to live up to its potential. The high hopes that I had for the News app have unfortunately been (mostly) dashed. Whilst there are aspects of great execution in some limited areas, huge aspects of News seem half-baked and confused.

Read more