Smartphone Industry Financial Analysis

HTC’s competitive position is not sustainable. In fact, the disappointing financial performance in Q1 2012 and the increasingly decreasing operating margin all points to a slower growth. Besides the statistics, HTC also face several imminent threats, such as the popularity of Samsung and Apple’s smartphone offering, the increase in competitors in the smartphone market, the shift in market, from operator push to brand pull, and the ongoing patent war with Apple. However there are also opportunities HTC can take advantage of to keep its competitive position. The opportunities are presented in the high growth rate of Smartphone Market, 61% in 2011, and the lack of well made Android Tablet.

In order to evaluate the NPV of the first-generation phone (project) ignoring the possibility of investing in the second-generation phone (project), we projected the free cash flows (FCF) of the first-generation phone through 2001 to 2006. The total FCF was calculated as EBIT plus deprecation and subtract any capital expenditures along with change in net working capital. With risk-free rate of 10%, comparable firms’ beta of 1.2, and market premium of 4%, the appropriate discount rate for the project was 14.8% using CAPM. Sum

In The Wall Street Journal, tech reporter Daisuke Wakabayashi (2014) describes how Apple is expanding its reach into the business market. “The iPhone has replaced the BlackBerry as the mobile phone of choice, as the iPad assumes tasks once reserved for PCs,” (Wakabayashi, 2014). Wakabayashi (2014) noted that “Apple is going mainstream” when it comes to the corporate world, and he profiles multiple large enterprises — including SAP, Nordstrom, and Cisco — that have rolled out iOS and other Apple devices to their

The figure above shows Apple Inc, the Market cap lead, and Dell, the Market cap last, corporations and their market share compared to the industry and the technology sector. As you can see above Apple Inc. is almost as close to the market cap for the Personal Computers industry. Although, it does have a smaller P/E ratio compared to the industry it still is the highest among the top leaders within the industry. Compared to the industry Apple’s does not have a debt to equity ratio, which is excellent. Apple’s net profit is also the highest within the top competitors and the industry. The price to free cash flow exceeds the industry as well as the technology sector.

But the real reflection of the performance of the management lies in the Operating profit margin (OPM) and in this case M&M has done fairly well and their OPM for FY2014-15 is similar to their last years OPM. Whereas Tata Motors has increased their non-operating expense by spending to the tune of 4K crore on R&D (for Jaguar and Land Rover) and has hence garnered losses for FY 2014-15 (OPM: TM -5.4% M&M 10.4%). Although

According to Digital Trends, “The reason behind the Apple profits off cell phones is that, the manufacturing cost of one IPhone is around $200 and they always sell the phones at $400-$800 profit on a single device” (Kharpal, 2015). This proves that the overall profit is more in case of selling a premium smartphone as compared the selling large number of cheap phones.

Accounting information is used by management in various ways to make the business decisions. Accounting information is used to compute financial ratios and comparing the financial data of one period with other. Various Ratios are used by the managers and accountants for controlling the functioning of the organization. These ratios are also known as accounting or financial ratios, these ratios play very important role in the organization. Following are the ratios of Verizon wireless for last three years:-

While analyzing AT& T a few differences are noted. As with Verizon, the current ratio did improve with an increase of five percent from 58% in 2005 to 63% in 2006. However, even though debt to equity decreased for both companies AT & T's decrease was only 4% compared to Verizon's significant decrease of 23%. The net profit margin ratio did opposite changes between the two companies while Verizon's increase not even one full percent AT &T's decreased by almost 3%. Even with these significant changes AT & T's price to earnings, as of 2006, was at 20.89 (www.hoovers.com). These variances tell us a couple of things. First, that AT& T has taken on more debt in 2006 versus 2005, but along with that debt they have been able to increase their net profit margin, helping the company in the way of earnings. The strong price to earnings ratio of 20.89 also shows that the shareholders are not faring too poorly either.

In 2013, Samsung surpassed Apple gaining more profit than them in the second quarter. In the same year, Samsung reported a profit of 27.06 billion dollar (27.74 trillion won) making it the highest earning company in each quarter after they passed Apple. On the other hand, Apple Inc. sold 442.35 million unit in the same time span. It sold 72.3 million unit in 2011, 125.04 million unit in 2012, and almost 150.3 million unit in 2013. The company recorded a profit of approximately 37 billion dollar in 2013. The difference between the profits of Samsung and Apple is that in the first quarter Apple had a net profit of 13.1 million dollar while Samsung had a net profit of only 7.2 million dollar.

Further, in 2012 net income increased to $41,733,000,000. This shows that while the industry was declining, Apple was able to stay strong and profitable.

Competitor's Ratios and Analysis. Using relative comparative analysis (Table 6), competing firms Google and Amazon have unique performance over fiscal years (FY) 2014-2016. Measuring profit performance using profitability ratios, Google has a greater gross profit margin than Apple and retains an average of 61 cents for every dollar spent on direct sales. However, Apple outperforms Google on both return on assets and return on equity ratios. Meaning, Apple retains 14 cents for every dollar in assets in comparison to Google’s 11 cent retained average. In addition, Apple retains a net average of 35 cents for every dollar invested by common shareholders.

The financial analysis expressed in this paper shows a comparison of two large firms in the communication and technology industry. Microsoft and Apple Inc. both deal in telecommunication gadgets and accessories within the United States and around the world. The paper focuses on the financial comparison of the two companies for two fiscal years of the year 2014 and 2015. A close analysis of the financial ratios is employed in bringing up the comparison. These rates are derived from the balance sheet and statement of income of both firms.

During July 2007, Motorola Inc. (Motorola), mobile devices business encountered lot of challenges and reported losses.

Smartphone market is fast-moving and very high competitive due to intense competition between two big smartphone producers, Apple and Samsung. At the beginning, Apple dominated this market solely by introducing a new innovative type of smartphone by Steve Jobs that has revolutionized people lifestyle and mobile industry. A few years after launching iPhone, a new fast following competitor, Samsung came into this market, and their sales have outperformed Apple from the year 2011 (According to Chart A1 in Appendix). In term of developing their product, Samsung has created its products by following Apple’s technology since the beginning of producing its smartphone, therefore there are many patent lawsuits between them. Since Steve Job passed away, Apple has continued to develop its core competence, which is an innovation of new type of smartphone that could help them to take back their market share from its rival, Samsung. Nonetheless, the competition between Apple and Samsung will still continue intensively in the future.

With Apple being so far ahead of their competition, the only problem one can foresee in Apple’s future is how long they can sustain such innovation before they plateau. Apple does a phenomenal job at releasing their innovative products before their competition, but if their innovation cannot hold steady, this may lead to changes in demand for their products considerably. This can be seen with their release of the iPhone, the first successful touch screen cellular phone. Although people swarmed to the iPhone when it was first released because of its advanced technology, as the years have passed, other similar designs, including those with android and windows based operating systems, have drawn a considerable portion of the market. A clear representation of Apple’s attempt to regain some of this market can be seen when the iPhone was released to Verizon Wireless’ customers in