Shareholders are getting a huge payday from Apple.
Along with revealing last quarters monstrous profits, Tim Cook has announced that Apple is increasing its capital buyback program to the tune of $140 billion.
Apple’s Board of Directors have authorized an increase of more than 50 percent to the company’s program to return capital to shareholders. Under the new plans, Apple will give a total of $200 billion in cash back to stock holders by the end of March 2017.
“We believe Apple has a bright future ahead, and the unprecedented size of our capital return program reflects that strong confidence,” said Tim Cook, Apple’s CEO. “While most of our program will focus on buying back shares, we know that the dividend is very important to many of our investors, so we’re raising it for the third time in less than three years.”
The iPhone is still a money printing machine for Apple. Photo: Jim Merithew/Cult of Mac
Apple has released the numbers for its Q1 2015 financial results, and they’re monstrous.
Not only did Apple manage to have the second most successful earnings in the company’s history, but it blew past Wall Street’s expectations with a monstrous $58 billion in revenue, leading to $13.6 billion in profits – both of which are records in Q2.
“We are thrilled by the continued strength of iPhone, Mac and the App Store, which drove our best March quarter results ever,” said Tim Cook, Apple’s CEO. “We’re seeing a higher rate of people switching to iPhone than we’ve experienced in previous cycles, and we’re off to an exciting start to the June quarter with the launch of Apple Watch.”
Apple shares were trading up about 2% on the day and closed today at $132.65, just under that company’s all-time high. Here’s a closer look at Apple’s impressive numbers:
Tim Cook knows that haters gonna hate, hate, hate. Photo: Apple
Apple sucks! Or at least it does according to its most recent purchase: the domain name Apple.sucks, which the company has shelled out the cash to acquire.
Apple earnings are on the way. Photo: Jim Merithew/Cult of Mac
In less than an hour, Tim Cook and CFO Luca Maestri will reveal whether iPhone 6 sales have continued to sail past Wall Street’s expectations. We’ll be on hand to liveblog all the action from the Q2 2015 Apple earnings call.
The results are expected to be monstrous, thanks to strong demand for the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus carrying over from last quarter’s historic results. Wall Street is expecting Q2 2015 to be the second-biggest quarter in the history of Apple, with revenue believed to top $56 billion, for 23 percent year-over-year growth.
Apple only needs to sell more than 58.1 million iPhones to make it the second-biggest quarter ever, but what we’re most anxious to hear is whether Tim and Luca drop some Apple Watch numbers on us.
The call begins at 2 p.m. Pacific, but the liveblog action starts now. Keep this tab open and come back throughout the day for coverage and commentary.
Lark, Reyes and Juno are three new filters for Instagram. Photo: Instagram
Instagram continues to play with the color wheel, introducing three new filters Monday the company says get inspiration from weekend outdoor adventures.
In addition to the filters, named Lark, Reyes and Juno, Instagram now allows users to include emoji on hashtags.
Since surpassing more than 300 million users in December, Instagram has added several new features to the photo-sharing app. It added five filters in December and last month, rolled out a new app called Layout, which allows users to combine multiple images in a single post.
In short film Life on Trial, a gamer deals with the devastating effects of lag. Photo: Life on Trial
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If your internet service provider faced a trial, would it be found guilty of sucking?
That’s the cheeky question posed by satirical short film Life on Trial, a goofball riff on classic courtroom dramas. Only in this trial, the victim is a video game character — Poanbone the Smashivator — and the defendant is the game’s creator, who skimped on network services.
Apple Watch already has a ton of apps. Photo: Jim Merithew/Cult of Mac
Apple is pushing into new territory with the Apple Watch, by making it the first device to come from Cupertino that uses an OLED display. One of the reasons Apple’s never brought OLED displays to the iPhone is they’re more challenging to engineer than long-established LCDs.
Apple hasn’t given us too many details about the Apple Watch’s display yet, other than telling us it’s a ‘Flexible Retina Display’ but the team over at DisplayMate have put the new display to the test, and came away with a shocking discovery: Apple Watch Sport has a better display than the Apple Watch Edition.
Facebook Messenger is today launching its assault on Skype with a new update that brings video calling to users on Android and iOS. The feature works over Wi-Fi and LTE, and it’s completely free.
Former super model Christy Turlington Burns has been counting down the weeks leading up the London Marathon by blogging about her experience training with the Apple Watch.
Burns revealed new details about the Apple Watch leading up to its release, but now that the marathon is over and she’s crossed the finish line, Burns can add awesome another feature to her blog: it helped her break a personal record.
Tom Dickson put the new Apple Watch in a blender for his show, Will It Blend? Photo: Will It Blend?
The glass may be scratch-proof, but the Apple Watch is not durable enough to withstand a blender.
Tom Dickson wasted no time having the Apple Watch as a guest on his YouTube show, Will It Blend?Sure enough, it didn’t.
Dickson – maybe all too cheerfully – placed the watch in one of his Blendtec blenders and gave it a whirl. It seemed to take the beating from the initial revolutions of the blade before pieces began flying off the watch. The session ended with black smoke and a pile of what looked like ashes.
