Agreed, as if Apple profits are not "high enough" already:
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/globe-in ... le1993205/Apple shines as profit nearly doubles
OMAR EL AKKAD — TECHNOLOGY REPORTER
From Thursday's Globe and Mail
Published Wednesday, Apr. 20, 2011 4:42PM EDT
For once, Apple Inc. (AAPL-Q350.708.292.42%) is suffering from a tablet problem – a problem its competitors wish they had.
Its recently released iPad 2 is so popular the company can’t meet demand and is dealing with “the mother of all backlogs,” according to chief operating officer Tim Cook.
Despite selling fewer-than-expected iPads, however, the most valuable technology company in the world posted fiscal second-quarter numbers that easily beat analyst expectations.
The computer maker posted revenue of $24.67-billion (U.S.) and profit soared 95 per cent to $5.99-billion, or $6.40 per diluted share, during the quarter ended March 26. During the same period last year, revenue was $13.5-billion and profit was $3.07-billion, or $3.33 per diluted share.
For this quarter, analysts had expected earnings per share of $5.37 on revenue of $23.3-billion – well below Apple’s actual results. The company’s own guidance for the quarter, which it gave out in January, was even lower.
However Apple shipped only 4.69 million iPad tablets during the quarter, falling short of the Street’s expectations, which hovered around the six-million mark. The miss is in large part a result of the transition to a second-generation tablet – the iPad 2 – in March. Apple would not release the breakdown of iPad versus iPad 2 sales during the quarter, but because consumers had anticipated the new tablet months ahead of time, it appears many opted to wait, rather than buy the older version.
As a result, Apple has so far struggled to meet iPad 2 demand, with almost all stores still sold out today, more than a month after the product went on sale.
“Demand on the iPad 2 has been staggering,” Mr. Cook said. “I’m still amazed that we're still heavily backlogged.”
...
“Apple is the company that is best capturing revenue and profits from the mobile revolution, in our opinion,” said Colin Gillis, director of research and senior technology analyst at BGC Financial. “No other company in the space can approach the platform and ecosystem that Apple has built to generate such revenue and profits.” While there are others with meaningful market share, they “significantly lag in generating revenue, and none deliver equivalent profits, in our view,” he said.
Their profit DOUBLED since this time last year, and they still have to sue companies for more money, greedy bastages, yet another reason I detest Crapple as a company, overpriced overhyped fruit-branded geek-wannabee products.
It is ironic to note that profit would have been even higher if Foxconn employees ( which produce many parts for Apple under contract ) hadn't all started jumping to their deaths in the past few years over super-low wages and horrid working/living conditions...
http://www.wired.com/magazine/2011/02/ff_joelinchina/1 Million Workers. 90 Million iPhones. 17 Suicides. Who’s to Blame?
By Joel Johnson February 28, 2011 | 12:00 pm | Wired March 2011
Pic of the new "suicide jumper prevention nets" :
I’ve written thousands of posts, millions of words, about things. Usually things with electricity in them. Doing this for a living, on and off, for the better part of a decade, has greatly—perhaps fundamentally—changed how I perceive the world around me. I can no longer look at the material world as a collection of objects but instead see interfaces, histories, and materials.
To be soaked in materialism, to directly and indirectly champion it, has also brought guilt. I don’t know if I have a right to the vast quantities of materials and energy I consume in my daily life. Even if I thought I did, I know the planet cannot bear my lifestyle multiplied by 7 billion individuals. I believe this understanding is shared, if only subconsciously, by almost everyone in the Western world.
Every last trifle we touch and consume, right down to the paper on which this magazine is printed or the screen on which it’s displayed, is not only ephemeral but in a real sense irreplaceable. Every consumer good has a cost not borne out by its price but instead falsely bolstered by a vanishing resource economy. We squander millions of years’ worth of stored energy, stored life, from our planet to make not only things that are critical to our survival and comfort but also things that simply satisfy our innate primate desire to possess. It’s this guilt that we attempt to assuage with the hope that our consumerist culture is making life better—for ourselves, of course, but also in some lesser way for those who cannot afford to buy everything we purchase, consume, or own.
When that small appeasement is challenged even slightly, when that thin, taut cord that connects our consumption to the nameless millions who make our lifestyle possible snaps even for a moment, the gulf we find ourselves peering into—a yawning, endless future of emptiness on a squandered planet—becomes too much to bear.
When 17 people take their lives, I ask myself, did I in my desire hurt them? Even just a little?
And of course the answer, inevitable and immeasurable as the fluttering silence of our sun, is yes.
Just a little.
The three page article is too long to replicate here, but it is an interesting read... greedy Crapple!!
Apple is the LAST company that should be suing anybody right now given the above, I could see it if their profits were down, but they DOUBLED their profits and still want more, its unbelievable... I put them in the same group as SCO and Rambus, sue-happy morons without a leg to stand on...
I don't blame Foxconn here, I blame Apple who is the "Walmart" of tech purchasers these days, they shop around until they get the rock-bottom price on the components contracts they want. The volume is so high that the Chinese factories fight to the death to get these low-margin high-volume contracts. There is a price to pay for that of course, and it is the workers who usually suffer most, as was the case with Foxconn. Don't blame them entirely, blame Apple for squeezing them down to the last bloody penny , there is nothing left for workers afterwards. To Foxconn's credit, after the suicides last year, they did raise salaries a great deal, and improve worker's working and living conditions, even the safety nets helped deter further jumpers, laughable as that idea was at the time they installed them... I put the blame solely on Apple for their pure capitalist greed, to use their purchasing power ( like Walmart does ) to get rock-bottom prices, at the cost of human life and dignity... you can call me a communist if you like, but I would rather be liberal and pro-union than have to jump off a factory building because my job paid next to nothing and I lived in basically a prison in every sense of the word, with no end or escape in sight...
To put the suicide rates in perspective though:
http://www.osnews.com/story/23359/The_Foxconn_SuicidesThe second thing journalists and bloggers should stop doing is withholding vital information only to be able to make more sensationalist stories that appeal to our universal western sense of superiority. If you tell us rich and comfy westerners that in 2010, ten Foxconn workers have committed suicide, we'll get all concerned and angry at the company for mistreating their workers.
However, an important bit of information is often ignored, because this bit of information kind of takes all the sting out of this juicy story: the total amount of workers at Foxconn. This massive company has an even more massive amount of workers: 486000 employees (although AP states 300000, and The New York Times says 420000). That would be 3% of the Dutch population.
This number is so immense it will fly over most people's heads, but it's a very important figure, because if you compare the number of suicides among Foxconn's 486000 employees to the Chinese average, you'll see that Foxconn is still well below said average. In China, 14 out of 100000 people commit suicide every year. This means that to match China's average, 68 Foxconn employees would have to commit suicide every year.
By comparison, in The Netherlands we have a suicide rate of 10 per 100000. The US does 11 per 100000.
These are very basic statistics. Is it harsh to reduce people to statistics? Of course it is, but in this case, it's vital, because it illustrates that these figures simply aren't out of the ordinary. Of course, every life lost is one too many, but we have to keep both feet on the ground here and look at this objectively.
So the suicide rate at Foxconn was actually less than the Chinese average that year, still does not make it "right" though..
Here is a report from a worker that infiltrated the Foxconn factory and reported about its conditions:
http://micgadget.com/3793/the-real-trut ... e-cluster/The Real Truth Behind Foxconn’s Suicide Cluster
A good read and enlightening...
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/07/busin ... icide.htmlSociologists and other academics see the deaths as extreme signals of a more pervasive trend: a generation of workers rejecting the regimented hardships their predecessors endured as the cheap labor army behind China’s economic miracle.
Rather than take their own lives, many more workers at Foxconn — tens of thousands more — have simply quit. In recent interviews here, employees said the typical Foxconn hire lasted just a few months at the factory before leaving, demoralized.
They complain about military-style drills, verbal abuse by superiors and “self-criticisms” they are forced to read aloud, as well as occasionally being pressured to work as many 13 consecutive days to complete a big customer order — even when it means sleeping on the factory floor.
Although the legal limit in China is 36 hours of overtime a month, several workers interviewed here said they regularly exceeded that by wide margins.
“They leave so soon because they can’t adjust to factory life,” said Wang Xueliu, a production team leader who has worked at Foxconn for six years. He, too, plans to leave soon, to join a new business with his brother making candles for export.
Many other manufacturers in China also struggle with high turnover.
Slaves to the New World Order. What is really scary is that after doing more investigation, it turns out that Foxconn is actually one of the BETTER chinese factories to work in these days, many other chinese factories have worse working conditions !! longer hours, lower pay, slave mentality, human rights abuses, Child slave labour, the list goes on... so as bad as we think Foxconn is, there are actually many worse places to work in China ( and around the world actually ).
Welcome to the New World Order...
