Apple Plans New Spaceship-like Campus

itwbennett has a story that might answer the question of what Apple is doing with the billions they have in the bank. "Apple CEO Steve Jobs on Tuesday presented plans for a new Apple campus to the Cupertino City Council. The office building will look 'a little like a spaceship landed,' said Jobs. It will also be just 4 stories tall, is big enough to house all 12,000 Apple employees (with room for growth), and will generate its own energy." Keep reading to see the riveting town council meeting.

Re:He looks sick

[MachineShedFred]

He's actually always done this. When Apple has business with the City of Cupertino, he's the one that shows up to talk to the city council, not some PR flack or a lawyer.

Re:Now he's building a mothership. This will end w

[Wyatt Earp]

The Jonestown massacre was carried out with Cherry and Grape Flavor-Aid poisoned with Valium, chloral hydrate, cyanide, and Phenergan.

Re:Design: lush forest, reality: drab carpark?

[whiteboy86]

If you bothered to watch the video you would have known that they are increasing the number of trees from 3000 (current state) to 6000 trees on the site. The multilevel car park will be all underground and the building will be self-powered by those fancy green power generators Google is using already. So it will be green and also local environment friendly. Given the unlimited resources they have at their disposal I bet the project is realized the way they plan it and as intended, no snake words, gloomy conclusions or the general /. pessimism is needed here.

Re:Only 12.000?

[NatasRevol]

Hardware sales of iOS, not software sales.

Go look at Apple's own numbers:
iPod - $1.6B
iPhone - $12.2B
iPad - $2.2B
Music/Apps (which is other) - $1.6B
http://images.apple.com/pr/pdf/q211data_sum.pdf [apple.com]

Re:Only 12.000?

[Ixokai]

You're absolutely right: IOS related sales is the vast majority of their revenue.

That does not, *at all*, mean "iTunes Store". It could mean, "revenue from our products, AND the iTunes store" -- but the vast majority of the profit in that category is their products. IPhone, iPad, etc.

Getting precise break outs is impossible, because Apple doesn't specifically release a profit per product, but they do give certain numbers.

http://www.asymco.com/2011/01/25/ios-enables-71-of-apple-profits-with-platform-products-make-up-93-of-gross-margin/ [asymco.com]

for instance. See where "music" and "software" are, compared to "iPad", "iPhone", "iPod" combined?

You're doing some really weird math where you're saying, "before the store" verses "after the store" and equating the fact that they'd have explosive growth TO profits from the store itself. You're missing the part where they've also had record after record after record breaking quarters selling the actual *products*, iThings -- at a high margin, with huge profits.

Again: no. You're imagining that Apple is first and foremost a media and content delivery hegemony, and you're wrong. They're the biggest music seller in the world right now, but they still make most of their money, hands down, on their devices.

Profits due to "IOS" is not "app store": not even kind of. For apps, they've paid out 2.5b to developers total so far -- TOTAL. For the rest of the content, they don't lump iTunes Store (music, movies, etc) into "IOS" because its NOT part of the IOS profit category. You can get all that content (except books) on the Mac, and they have never really given (at least as long as I've been listening to their financial conference calls) really specific details about how much of their running profit comes from the content stores.

Re:Only 12.000?

[UnknowingFool]

Are you reading the same Q2 2011 statement [apple.com] I'm reading? In it Apple shows their revenue by products.

• Macs: $4.96B
• iPod: $1.60B
• Music and other online store services (3): $1.63B
• iPhone and related (4): $12.30B
• iPad and related (5): $2.84B
• Other peripherals (6): $580M
• Software (7): $743M

(3) Includes sales from the iTunes Store, App Store, and iBookstore in addition to sales of iPod services and Apple-branded and third-party iPod accessories.
(4) Includes revenue recognized from iPhone sales, carrier agreements, services, and Apple-branded and third-party iPhone accessories.
(5) Includes revenue recognized from iPad sales, services, and Apple-branded and third-party iPad accessories.
(6) Includes sales of displays, wireless connectivity and networking solutions, and other hardware accessories.
(7) Includes sales from the Mac App Store in addition to sales of other Apple-branded and third-party Mac software and Mac and Internet services.

From the financial statement, Apple has clearly separated App Store revenue from iOS device revenue. It's not rocket surgery but it's rather simple accounting and in black and white. Steve Jobs has said that the iOS ecosystem is what had made iOS devices successful; however, in terms of financial contribution, the hardware devices make far more money.