Apple and Samsung earnings: 5 takeaways for the future

posted by Daniel P.

Jul 28, 2016, 9:22 AM

Apple and Samsung earnings: 5 takeaways for the future

As usual, Apple did beat the analysts' earnings and sales expectations, netting $7.8 billion in this past quarter, and Samsung did the same, hauling $5.2 billion in net income for the quarter that ended in June. Samsung reported a tad less reliance on smartphones for its profits, at 53% vs about 60% for Apple, but overall both companies did great given the maturing phone industry, and the barely-there growth of the whole handset pie that you see in the WSJ chart above.

Samsung rode on the wings of the Galaxy S7 edge and S7 sales success, while Apple did better than expected, considering its problems in China, and the fact that this is the last full quarter of the 2015 iPhones product cycle before the iPhone 7 enters the fray in September.

In any case, it's the forward-looking statements tucked in the quarterly result releases and conference calls with investors that we are most interested about, as they show where the industry might be heading in the near and distant future. Needless to say, there were a few telling hints that slipped here and there, which we are listing as a speculation game in the slides below.