Tim Cook On New Products In The Fall, Larger iPhone, iMac Delays, And More

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Today Apple announced its financial earnings for the last fiscal quarter, reporting the first year-over-year loss in profit the company has seen in ten years. The tone of Apple’s call with investors was quite different than past quarters. Tim Cook and co. seemed very much on the defensive, as Wall Street has been hammering AAPL for the past several months.

There were still several interesting tidbits from the call that we’ve rounded up. Tim Cook spoke vaguely about exciting new products in the fall and throughout 2014. Comments were made about the possibility of a larger iPhone, iMac supply constraints, and, of course, plenty of numbers.

New Products In The Fall And 2014

In case you haven’t noticed, Apple hasn’t held one press event yet this year. And aside from WWDC in June, we may not see Apple executives take the stage until the fall. During today’s call with investors, Tim Cook said, “Our teams are hard at work at some amazing new hardware, software, and services that we can’t wait to introduce this fall and throughout 2014.” He also mentioned the potential for “growth” with new product “categories.” iWatch, anyone?

The rumor mill has pegged the iPhone 5S release for around August, but Cook’s comments make it seem as though the good stuff will be saved for later in the year.

5-inch iPhone

Every time Apple holds a Q&A with analysts after an earnings call, someone asks about a larger iPhone display. Today was no different.

“Our competitors have made some significant trade-offs”

After he was asked about the competitive landscape of smartphones with 5-inch displays, Cook said, “Some customers value large screen size, and others value other factors such as resolution, color quality, white balance, reflectivity, power consumption, compatibility of apps, and portability. Our competitors have made some significant trade-offs to ship a larger display.” He then reiterated that Apple would not release a larger iPhone “while these tradeoffs exist.”

Apple’s argument has always been that the iPhone 5 is the optimal size for using with one hand. That’s the main guideline Apple uses when determining if a screen is the right size for the iPhone.

Delaying The iMac

“We felt customers had to wait too long”

Tim Cook made a very rare kind of comment during today’s call: he explained something Apple should have done differently. After facing terrible supply constraints for the new iMac in 2012, Cook wishes Apple would have waited to release the product in early 2013. “If we could run it over, I’d announce the iMac after the turn of the year,” admitted Cook. “We felt customers had to wait too long for that specific product.”

During Apple’s last quarterly earnings call, it was revealed that Mac sales suffered due to iMac supply constraints during the holidays.

iCloud Is Growing Like Crazy

Despite Apple’s spotty track record at getting cloud services right, today it was revealed that iCloud’s user base jumped 20% from 250 million last quarter to 300 million users. That means the number of iCloud accounts have nearly tripled in size since around this time last year.

iTunes And App Store Growth

iTunes and the App Store are both quite healthy. The iTunes Store brought in a record $4.1 billion in revenue, up 30% from this time last year.

The App Store has served over 45 billion downloads to date and paid out $9 billion to third-party developers. Around 800 apps are downloaded per second.

For a visual breakdown of today’s numbers, check out Cult of Mac’s Q2 2013 charts.

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