Apple Reports Q3 2015 Earnings of $10.7B on $49.6B Revenue: 47.5M iPhones, 10.9M iPads, 4.8M Macs
Apple today announced financial results for the third fiscal quarter and second calendar quarter of 2015. For the quarter, Apple posted revenue of $10.7 billion and net quarterly profit of $49.6 billion, or $1.85 per diluted share, compared to revenue of $37.4 billion and net quarterly profit of $7.7 billion, or $1.28 per diluted share, in the year-ago quarter.
Gross margin for the quarter was 39.7 percent compared to 39.4 percent in the year-ago quarter, with international sales accounting for 64 percent of revenue. Apple also declared an upcoming dividend payment of $0.52 per share, payable on August 13 to shareholders of record as of August 10.
Apple sold 47.5 million iPhones during the quarter, up from 35.2 million a year earlier, while Mac sales registered 4.8 million units, up from 4.4 million units in the year-ago quarter. iPad sales continued to decline, however, falling to 10.9 million from 13.3 million.
“We had an amazing quarter, with iPhone revenue up 59 percent over last year, strong sales of Mac, all-time record revenue from services, driven by the App Store, and a great start for Apple Watch,” said Tim Cook, Apple’s CEO. “The excitement for Apple Music has been incredible, and we’re looking forward to releasing iOS 9, OS X El Capitan and watchOS 2 to customers in the fall.”
Apple’s guidance for the fourth quarter of fiscal 2015 includes expected revenue of $49-51 billion and gross margin between 38.5 and 39.5 percent.
Apple will provide live streaming of its fiscal Q3 2015 financial results conference call at 2:00 PM Pacific, and MacRumors will update this story with coverage of the conference call highlights.
Conference call starts at 2:00 PM Pacific – No need to refresh 
NASA gets a peek at two of Pluto’s smaller moons
NASA’s New Horizons is showering loads of attention on Pluto and its largest moon Charon, but what about the dwarf planet’s tinier moons? Don’t worry, the probe is giving these smaller celestial bodies their time in the spotlight. The spacecraft has delivered images of two moons, Nix and Hydra, that are detailed enough to give clues to their geography. Nix, for instance, has a reddish spot that might be a crater. Hydra, meanwhile, has an irregular shape that could easily remind you of a mutant potato.
If you’re not satisfied with these blurry shots, you won’t have to wait long for something better. More detailed images are coming, and you should see pictures of the two remaining moons (Kerberos and Styx) by mid-October. When that happens, humanity will have its first reasonably complete family portrait for one of the most distant objects in the Solar System.
[Image credit: NASA/JHUAPL/SWRI]
Filed under: Science
Source: NASA
‘The Good Dinosaur’ trailer: Pixar makes CGI look real
It’s a good year for Pixar fans: Inside Out was one of the studio’s best films in years, and we also have another to look forward to on November 25, The Good Dinosaur. Now we’ve got our best look at the film yet with its first official trailer, which features some of Pixar’s most photorealistic CGI work yet. The basic premise: What if the asteroid that wiped out dinosaurs 65 million years ago missed Earth? And what if humans and dinos evolved alongside each other? The film centers on an Apatosaurus named Arlo who’s separated from his family and befriends a young human named Spot. It’s a typical Pixar subversion of the “boy and his pet dinosaur” idea — this time, the human appears to be the pet. Pixar based the environments in the film on real locations to achieve that photorealistic look, complete with terrain data from around the world, Wired reports. The movie is reportedly low on dialog, but who needs it with imagery like this?
Via: Slashfilm
Source: YouTube
Microsoft reports a $2.1 billion loss in Q4
Microsoft’s earnings for the fourth quarter are in, and they show an operating loss of $2.1 billion, despite $22.2 billion in revenue (compared to $23.3 billion last year). A lot of that is due to the previously announced write-down for Nokia (and 7,800 job cuts) that caused an $7.5 billion hit. Of course, we knew that was coming, but the other news is that revenue and operating income were slightly down from last year too. Microsoft sold 8.4 million Lumia phones in Q4 (compared to 5.8 million last year), but revenue dropped 38 percent to $748 million, As the company looks forward to Windows 10, revenue for that division dropped 22 percent, a figure that it attributed to XP’s end-of-support cycle.
The net loss in Q4 amounted to $3.2 billion, which Bloomberg reports is its biggest loss ever. This occurs as Microsoft under new CEO Satya Nadella changes its approach to segments like hardware, and the cloud. It made more money from hardware, as revenue for Surface grew to $888 million and Xbox claimed a 27 percent gain. Even Bing is making more money, and says its market share in search has grown to 20.3 percent.
Developing…
Filed under: Microsoft
Source: Microsoft
Official plug-in brings Google Drive support to Microsoft Office
Google Drive is a convenient tool many of us take full advantage of. Not only can we store all our files there, but we can also work on text files, spreadsheets and presentations, all from the browser or mobile apps. We know many of you are well invested in Microsoft’s Office software, though. If you prefer to use Office but would rather stick with Google Drive for your cloud services, the Search Giant has a solution that will make your workflow much more seamless.
Aside from being able to open your files with your application of choice (including Office apps) straight from Google Drive, users can now also save files to Google Drive directly from Office. You can now save any changes or even store new documents straight from Microsoft’s software.
The user will see an option to save to “My Drive” when storing any document from the official Microsoft apps. Simply click on the option and you should be ready to go! It’s a simple concept and the plug-in is rather minimal, but it will mean the world if you are a fan of both Google Drive and Microsoft Office apps. These two services operating together can completely change your workflow, and you no longer have to rely on OneDrive.
Interested? The only requirement is that you have Windows. Hopefully an option for Mac users also comes soon. If you qualify, simply head over to Google’s Drive for Office download page and install the plug-in. It takes but a few seconds.
But tell us, guys. Is this something you were hoping for? Will you dump OneDrive now that Google is offering this plug-in?
AIVAnet 