TheTechStorm has come across this nice run down of quotes from Apple’s CEO Tim Cook during his conference call on Wednesday 23 posted by Macworld. Here are some the best quotes from Tim:
Tim Cook on iPhone outside of the U.S:
[quote] Sequentially we increased over 70 percent from the September quarter, which was 3.5 times the market, and so we could not be happier with that. In terms of geographic distribution, we saw our highest growth in China, and it was into the triple digits. And so I would characterize it as we’re extremely pleased.[/quote]
Tim Cook on the iPhone’s screen size
[quote] The iPhone 5 offers a new, 4-inch Retina display, which is the most advanced display in the industry. No one comes close to matching the level of quality as the Retina display. It also provides a larger screen size for iPhone customers without sacrificing the one-handed ease of use that our customers love. We put a lot of thinking into screen size and believe we’ve picked the right one.[/quote]
Tim Cook on iPhone demand in the quarter:
[quote] If you look at the iPhone sales across the quarter, we were very constrained for much of the quarter on iPhone 5. As we begin to produce more and ship more, sales went up with the production. iPhone 4 was actually in constraint for the entire quarter, and sales remained strong. And so that’s how sales progress across the quarter.
Let me make one additional point on this: I know there’s been lots of rumors about order cuts and so forth, and so let me just take a moment to make a comment on these. I don’t want to comment on any particular rumor, because I would spend my life doing that, but I would suggest it’s good to question the accuracy of any kind of rumor about build plans. And I’d also stress that even if a particular data point were factual, it would be impossible to accurately interpret the data point as to what it meant for our overall business, because the supply chain is very complex, and we obviously have multiple sources for things. Yields might vary, supplier performance can vary, the beginning inventory positions can vary, I mean there’s just an inordinately long list of things that would make any single data point not a great proxy for what’s going on.[/quote]
Tim Cook Apple’s philosophy versus market share preservation
[quote] The most important thing to Apple is to make the best products in the world that enrich customers’ lives. That’s our high order bit. That means that we aren’t interested in revenue for revenue’s sake. We can put the Apple brand on a lot of things and sell a lot more stuff, but that’s not what we’re here for. We want to make only the best products.
And so what does that mean for market share? I think we’ve had a great track record here on iPod, doing different products at different price points, and getting a reasonable share for doing that. I wouldn’t view those things as mutually exclusive as some might. But the high order bit is making a great product that enriches customers’ lives and so that’s what we’re focused on.[/quote]
Tim Cook on China
[quote] If you look at our total Greater China, which would include our retail stores in China, our revenues were $7.3 billion in the quarter. So this is incredibly high, it’s up over 60 percent year-on-year, and again that’s comparing 13 to 14 weeks, and so it’s really, the underlying growth is higher than that.
We saw exceptional growth in iPhones, into the triple digits. We shipped iPad very late in the quarter in December, and despite that, saw very nice growth. We are expanding in Apple retail there: In the year-ago quarter, we had six stores; we now we have 11. We obviously have many more to open there. In our premium resellers, we went over 400, up from a little over 200 in the previous year. And we increased iPhone point-of-sales from 7000 to over 17,000 there.
Now, this isn’t nearly what we need, and it’s not the final by any means, we’re not even close to that, but I feel that we’re making great progress. I was just over there recently and talking to a lot of different people, and I’m very happy with how things are going. It’s clear that China is, it’s already our second-largest region as you can see from the data that we’ve given you, and it’s clear that there’s a lot of potential there.[/quote]
Tim Cook on the Future of the Apple TV
[quote] You’re asking me all the questions I won’t answer, but let me see if I can find some comment to make that’s productive. In terms of the product that we sell today, Apple TV, we sold more last quarter than we’ve ever sold before, eclipsing 2 million during the quarter. It was up almost 60 percent year-on-year, and so there’s actually very good growth in that product. What was a small niche at one time of people that loved it is a much larger number that love it.
I have said in the past this is an area of intense interest for us, and it remains that. And I tend to believe that there’s a lot we can contribute in this space, and so we continue to pull the string and see where it leads us. But I don’t want to be more specific.[/quote]
..And finally, Tim Cook on Apple’s pricing strategy
[quote] I’m not going to go into our pricing strategy. But we feel great about the opportunity of getting products to customers and a percentage of those buying other Apple products and we’ve obviously seen evidence of that through history and continue to see evidence of that today.[/quote]
