Apple's Huge Q2

I believe this is made out of platinum, given their sales numbers.

Once again, Apple beat its own estimates and analyst guesses for a stellar $24.67 billion in revenue for Q2. More than half of their revenue came from the iPhone and related products... they sold 18.6 million iPhones in the quarter, up 113% over last year's Q2. The one thing that held them back was an inability to produce enough iPads to meet demand, and the backlog on the iPad 2 is monstrous, according to Apple.

In other Apple news, they've sued Samsung for patent infringement because of the Galaxy Tab and the Galaxy S products. Interestingly, in the legal filing we find out that Apple has sold 187 million iOS devices as of March 2011... 19 million iPads, 60 million iPod Touches, and 108 million iPhones so far. For comparison purposes, the Nintendo DS line has sold 144 million units and the PSP line has sold 62 million units. The iPhone should pass up the DS line this year, and so should Android phones, in total units sold.

The iTunes store is now bringing in $1.4 billion per quarter... not a bad little business.

The rumor mill is now saying not to expect too much from the iPhone 5... new processor (the A5), better camera, maybe a few other tweaks... and it won't hit until September. I think that may well be true, but the real story is going to be how Apple attacks the lower price point end of the market. So far, Android phones have mostly been at the high end in iPhone price territory. But we're starting to see pretty nice smartphones based on Android coming down into the $100 price range, without a contract. This spells trouble for Apple unless it can respond.

Sure, they keep selling older models of the iPhone at lower prices, but there's a significant difference in horsepower between an iPhone 3G and an iPhone 4... not to mention an iPhone 5. Looking at what Apple did with the iPod line over time may be a clue as to how they will approach the issue of extending the iPhone line. They came up with ways to cost-reduce the product, make it smaller and reduce the feature set to the core features. So I will expect them to come up with some smaller, sleeker iPhone models to hit lower price points, and eventually cover a full range of phone prices.

Which, in turn, will mean more variations for developers to support... but a larger market overall.