Fun Factoid

Apple's quarterly revenue in China now exceeds the annual revenue of Kodak at its peak..and is roughly twice the entire annual digital camera market. At least if the numbers I found hither and yon are anywhere close to correct.

Makes you think....

Mike

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Featured Comments from:

Michael Perini: "Your observation is very much on point. Whether Apple's China revenues are larger than those of Kodak in its heyday on a present value basis is almost beside the point because if they're not, just wait a couple months and they will be. As for the camera industry, you have only to look at Apple moving away from professional applications and technologies like 10-bit color or wide gamut displays to know where they believe the world is going. They see those things as too small to bother with. As an investor you can't fault their decisions; as a photographer it's disappointing to see. As Steve Jobs said about computers, they'll be like trucks—most folks won't need one. I wonder what analogy they use for high-end cameras...???"

Comments

[Bryan Willman]

You need to apply inflation and purchase-power-parity adjustments for those comparisons to be really meaningful.

On the other hand, I at one time computed that the revenues of EACH of several large PC industry players, individually, where greater than the entire recorded music industry.

So I wouldn't be at all surprized if your observations continue to hold true even with corretly adjusted numbers.

[Sal Santamaura]

"...Makes you think...."

Makes me retch.

[Ed Hawco]

Maybe, but it doesn't make me think I need one of those silly watches.

[jerome]

Referring to Bryans's remark about the recorded music industry, I was surprised at how small their revenue is, especially given their enormous influence in legislation.

And other industries fly completely under the radar, and seemingly can exist without lawmakers hovering around 24/7 to protect their business model - while contributing massively to the economy.

[xtian]

Sure be nice if Apple could find it in its heart to keep/bring back some of those jobs to the US! If Gravity Payments can do it, they might as well give it a try! :)

[MarkR]

Fun factoid 2:

I'm using my iPad as an impromptu light table.

I'm using the accessibility features of my iPhone to invert all the colors of my phone, including the camera.

I'm using both in conjunction to cull through several boxes of Kodak negatives quickly and efficiently.

OK, it's not really on topic, but it does point to a new technology solution to an old technology problem.

[Stephen F Faust]

A few numbers for Bryan Willman's sake:
Kodak's peak annual revenue came in 1996, with $16B. Adjusted for inflation, that would be $24B in today's dollars. Today, Apple announced they they made 16.8B in revenue in China alone—and that's just this quarter!

Apple's financials are truly staggering and unprecedented. I work for one of the world's largest pharmaceutical companies--you know, that industry that is always getting disparaged for being too profitable. Well, Apple makes more in PROFIT than my company does in REVENUE, and Apple makes more revenue than the top 4 global pharmaceutical companies combined. They are a juggernaut.

[Robert]

Well said Mr. Perrini - spot on.

[Randolph]

I suspect that in 10 years everyone who wants to do computing will be using some Google product, because they seem to be the only company that actually cares about it.

[Thomas Paul Mc Cann]

The bigger they come the harder they fall

[Giovanni Maggiora]

Sadly, Micheal P seems to be spot on. We're too much of a niche for Apple to care enough. Though I don't fully give up, the MacPro cylinder is not there for nothing, and you can still buy third party pro screens instead of the shiny Apple crapretinas...
Then again, Apple was a niche once, too.

[Geoff Wittig]

Steve Jobs made some pithy and insightful comments. He also said a lot of things that have proved to be utterly wrong. His trucks/computers analogy strikes me as a transparent ploy to justify making us pay more for less.

A new iPhone you can put in your pocket costs around $200 to $300 up front, though of course the true cost is generally obscured behind plans and contracts, and can be more like $800. You can buy a very fast desktop computer with 2 terabytes of disk space (and a decent monitor!) that is vastly more capable for not much more. The benefit to Apple of persuading people they don't really need a computer when margins on iPhones are far higher is self-evident.
Pssst. Hey, buddy. Wanna buy an iWatch?

[Earl Dunbar]

If Apple is abandoning products and applications that better serve the professional, as Mr. Perini points out, then I see that as a good thing. Leave that sector to specialist companies. It actually makes choice easier for the "prosumers" and professionals.

[Speed]

From today's Wall Street Journal ...

Sony Corp. lost the smartphone war but rings up a sale on every shipment of Apple Inc.’s new iPhone 6 or Samsung Electronics Co.’s Galaxy S6.

The Japanese company is the world’s largest supplier of image sensors in digital cameras. To meet surging demand, Sony plans to invest $375 million in its image-sensor factories on top of nearly $900 million announced earlier this year.

http://www.wsj.com/articles/how-sony-makes-money-off-apples-iphone-1430274602

It's not like Kodak selling film but Sony is doing OK in the 21st century consumer camera business.

[Keith B]

An recent, alternate factoid about Apple:
Apple makes more money(profit) from their computers...computers, not iPhones, iPads, etc... than all the other [PC}computer companies make from their computers, combined.

[Speed]

Eastman Chemical was spun off from Kodak in 1993. (Wikipedia) In 2014, Eastman Chemical had sales of $9.5 billion and operating earnings of $1.1 billion.

Kodak Medical Imaging assets were sold to ONEX and became Carestream Health which had $2.4 billion in sales in 2014 and a gross profit just under a billion dollars.

In 2012, Kodak sold its patent portfolio for $525 million.

There are plenty of experienced consultants who can guide a company through the process of profitably exiting a shrinking business like film based imaging. Kodak should have found one.

[ctein]

Dear Michael,

"...Apple moving away from professional applications and technologies like 10-bit color or wide gamut displays..."

Uhh, when did they have these things???

If you meant to say they aren't moving *towards* those things, you might be right. Or not. I could argue it both ways, on technical grounds.

I think you may be remembering to way back when when Apple displays were among the best you could buy. But that was a long time ago, and it's not that their displays have gotten worse but that a very few companies', like NEC, have gotten immensely better.

In which case, Apple may well have decided to cede the high end to them. They've done that more than once, on peripherals, over the several past decades. It hasn't had to do with a commitment to professionals.

Right now I'm deciding if my next machine will be a Retina MacBook Pro with an external NEC monitor or a Retina iMac and, honestly, I'm strongly leaning towards the latter** (eventually it will be both, but, well, priorities). Out-of-the-box near-perfect sRGB eliminates most of the reason for 10-bit color depth, and AdobeRGB gamut is awfully nice, but do I *need* it, really? As opposed to lust after it.

But I can tell ya, it's definitely gonna be one or the other.

pax / Ctein

(** it's not a money decision-- the way I'd be tricking the two systems out, they are annoyingly similar in price)