Encouraging Apple Q4 result
Plenty of doom and gloom (again) on Apple's latest quarterly result and guidance. I have been reading articles like "Apple profits decline despite iPhone sales boost " from the BBC, "Despite sales of 34 mn iPhones, including iPhone 5S, iPhone 5C, Apple Inc results fail to enthuse" in the FinancialExpress, Forbes: "...despite selling 33.8 million iPhones, nearly 7 million more than a year ago and a bump of 26%, the company actually saw earnings fall (to $7.5 billion as margins shrunk)." Is it worrying that the margins are down to around 37% this time round, 5 quarters in a trot, from about 47% when they hit a record in 2012? Yes and no. Two reasons I'm not yet panicking as an investor: (1) although the moat is shrinking and price pressure builds up from maturing competition, unit sales held up (2) Fourth quarter is a weak quarter where it includes only one week of new iphone sales, meaning lots of older discounted iphones in that 33....