Apple Inc surpassed US$700 in late trading yesterday after announcing record first-day orders for the latest iPhone, fueling optimism that the company would keep generating the revenue growth that transformed it from a niche computer manufacturer into the world’s most valuable business.
Shares climbed as high as US$701.79 after reaching a record US$699.78 at the close in New York. The stock has advanced 73 percent this year. Apple crossed the US$600 thresholda in July, after passing US$500 in February and US$400 last year.
The iPhone 5, which features a bigger screen, faster chip and a lighter body, sold 2 million units in first-day orders, more than double a record set by the previous model, Apple said.
Since its 2007 debut, the device has become Apple’s top-selling product, accounting for about two-thirds of profit. Signs of robust demand reinforced expectations that Apple will withstand accelerating competition from Samsung Electronics Co and Google Inc in the US$219.1 billion smartphone market.
Apple’s surge gathered steam on Friday, after it began taking orders for iPhone 5. Apple’s Web site said new orders would not ship until Sept. 28, a week after the handset is due in stores, an indication that supply may be running thin.
“The initial batch is sold out,” Sterne Agee & Leach Inc analyst Shaw Wu said in an interview.
He raised his sales estimate for the quarter ending this month to 26 million units, from 23 million, saying: “We think that could turn out to be conservative.”
Apple surpassed Exxon Mobil Corp to become the biggest company in the world by market capitalization last year after overtaking Microsoft Corp as the most valuable technology provider in 2010.
IPhone sales last quarter alone reached US$16.2 billion, 33 percent higher than Google’s total and almost as much as Microsoft Corp’s US$18.1 billion in revenue.
As many as 58 million units of the iPhone 5 may sell by the end of the year, according the average estimate of analysts surveyed by Bloomberg. That could generate as much as US$36.2 billion in sales for Apple.
Share gains in coming months will hinge on the success of future products, such as a smaller version of the iPad tablet, which according to people with knowledge of the matter will be released next month. Apple is also trying to make headway with products that let users view TV shows and movies on Apple devices. However, the company has struggled to come to terms with communications providers over how products will be crafted, and media companies have been reluctant to cede control over content and customer relationships.
“That may be a tough market for them,” Morris Capital Advisors chief investment officer Dan Morris said.
Among the rows of vibrators, rubber torsos and leather harnesses at a Chinese sex toys exhibition in Shanghai this weekend, the beginnings of an artificial intelligence (AI)-driven shift in the industry quietly pulsed. China manufactures about 70 percent of the world’s sex toys, most of it the “hardware” on display at the fair — whether that be technicolor tentacled dildos or hyper-realistic personalized silicone dolls. Yet smart toys have been rising in popularity for some time. Many major European and US brands already offer tech-enhanced products that can enable long-distance love, monitor well-being and even bring people one step closer to
Malaysia’s leader yesterday announced plans to build a massive semiconductor design park, aiming to boost the Southeast Asian nation’s role in the global chip industry. A prominent player in the semiconductor industry for decades, Malaysia accounts for an estimated 13 percent of global back-end manufacturing, according to German tech giant Bosch. Now it wants to go beyond production and emerge as a chip design powerhouse too, Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said. “I am pleased to announce the largest IC (integrated circuit) Design Park in Southeast Asia, that will house world-class anchor tenants and collaborate with global companies such as Arm [Holdings PLC],”
Sales in the retail, and food and beverage sectors last month continued to rise, increasing 0.7 percent and 13.6 percent respectively from a year earlier, setting record highs for the month of March, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said yesterday. Sales in the wholesale sector also grew last month by 4.6 annually, mainly due to the business opportunities for emerging applications related to artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing technologies, the ministry said in a report. The ministry forecast that retail, and food and beverage sales this month would retain their growth momentum as the former would benefit from Tomb Sweeping Day
Thousands of parents in Singapore are furious after a Cordlife Group Ltd (康盛人生集團), a major operator of cord blood banks in Asia, irreparably damaged their children’s samples through improper handling, with some now pursuing legal action. The ongoing case, one of the worst to hit the largely untested industry, has renewed concerns over companies marketing themselves to anxious parents with mostly unproven assurances. This has implications across the region, given Cordlife’s operations in Hong Kong, Macau, Indonesia, the Philippines and India. The parents paid for years to have their infants’ cord blood stored, with the understanding that the stem cells they contained