iSupply did one of their usual Teardown’s on the Apple iPhone, estimating that they are on a 55% margin for each 8Gb phone that they sell.
The Teardown involves taking new consumer devices apart, as soon as they’re released, and working out how much they cost manufacturers to build and therefore how much profit – or loss – the sale of each device brings.
Such is the influence of iSupply these days, the news of the very healthy margin appeared to cause a rise in the value of Apple’s shares, up 4.9%.
The bill of materials and manufacturing costs totalled $265.83, with the iPhone selling for $599.
Given the close-to-lunatic media coverage (you’ll have noticed that we’ve been rather restrained, if not a little dismissive of the madness), we suspect that there’ll be triples all around at Apple’s 1 Infinite Loop office and some big celebrations over the 4 July holiday in the US today.
Nintendo’s stock market valuation was briefly higher than Sony’s on the Osaka Stock Exchange this morning.
Research house iSupply are predicting that IPTV will be boosting the reveneue generated by the premium video services market from its current level of less than $200Bn to a whopping $277Bn by 2010.
That aside, iSupply see the battle royal between two big, hairy beasts – the current pay-TV world of direct-to-home satellite and digital and analogue cable TV services – and the telcos who will be pushing quad-play.
Apple has continued to increase the number of iPods they’re selling. Their latest quarterly results show that they grown the 8.11m iPods they sold in the previous quarter to 8.73m this quarter, beyond market expectations. The quarter that is reporting didn’t change or introduce any new iPods. 
BSkyB results for the last year were broadly in line with predictions, but seasoned watchers of all things financial, recognise tell-tale signs of a flattening of the growth curve. The company has managed its spend on programming well, but technology costs remain high, with significant outgoings on expensive High Definition equipment, that won’t bring instant revenue returns. 
James Murdoch the CEO of BSkyB told the corporate world that “Our industry is changing faster than ever before and for Sky, 2006 has been an important and exciting year.” 
There’s been tons of financial results coming out around now, but we’ve spared you from them – we’re nice like that. Today we felt it was worth an exception. 
As is well known, one way Google does so well is by getting other sites (partners) to carry their clients advertising for them (of which Digital-lifestyles is one). In accounting-ese/jargon, they refer to it as Traffic Acquisition Costs or TAC. These increased to $785 million, up from $723 million in its first quarter. The TAC (see how quickly you can get into the swing of this jargon) remains at 32% of their advertising revenue, giving a rough understanding that Google take 68% of these ad earnings – pretty healthy in their favour. 
In the normal world, if you’d just discovered that your business had lost £14.9bn ($27.9bn) in a single year, you’d be blubbering into your laptop or heading to the pub to down a vat of Old Scrote’s Badger ale. 
In the white-hot mobile phone segment, Vodafone continues to create growth in key markets such as Germany, Spain and the United States, despite being forced to scuttle out of Japan – selling the business for £8.9bn – after failing to make much of a mark in the country. 
?The tumbrels are resounding for enemies of Google European head, and former T-Mobile boss, Nikesh Arora, following the “disappointing” financial results. In fact, the results were trivially down, but that was enough, and his head will be anxiously sought by Google in the US, say our stray packet interception team.
And the City doesn’t like people it can’t cut down to size. Give them an excuse, and they will jump on you, which is what happened. That $40m is the excuse they’ve been waiting for. “Misled us with the forecast!”
This morning, Homechoice, the currently London-focused DSL-based VOD announced that they had appointed CSFB (Credit Suisse First Boston, as was) to raise new capital for their expansion around the UK.
Their newly-announced ARPU (Average Revenue Per User) figures are impressive at £430, being considerably higher than Sky’s £384 (announced in 3 August 2005), but lower than Telewest’s £538 and ntl’s £477 (reported to ofcom, Q2 2005).
The big news late yesterday was that Google announced a second round share offer – on the first anniversary of their IPO. 
Mary Meeker from Morgan Stanley clearly feels the same, “this cash balance could allow the company increased flexibility to consider large strategic acquisitions.”