I listened in on the Q1 financial report today given by Apple, and there were some real “boring” questions. Not boring as infinancialquestions are boring, but boring as in insanely obvious questions that were being asked. You’ll never guess what the first question was… “How’s Steve?” I mean really? You haven’t heard that question asked a bazillion times in the last two months? You haven’t heard the same response over and over? Anyway.
One pretty exciting snippet of news to come out of the announcement was that Apple expects to open 25 more stores over the course of the year. Tim Cook was quick to place an emphasis on the fact that the Apple stores arepredominantlygoing to open overseas, and that a great deal of work has been placed into ensuring that the real estate locations were optimal to their sales models.
Another really interesting question was posed by Gene Munster fromPiper Jaffray about subsidized markets and the sales numbers in those areas. Tim Cook noted that they sold substantially less iPhones in those markets, but that they are looking toreevaluatetheir approach in countries such as India and try to gain more substantial market share there. He was also quick to give the marketing pitch that Apple’s primary objective is to build the worlds best phone, and not be the worlds most “sold” phone. They aren’t in the business of creating a cheap phone and music player to become the most sold phone on the market.
Those are just a couple of topics that seemed to really grab my attention outside of the numbers and revenue levels that have come to pass in the first Quarter, but i’ll save you all that math.