Apple talks Value on Q4 Earnings call

Apple reiterated some of their strong value language, which is worth repeating: 1.CEO Cook:

"We are dedicated to making the very best products in the world and we think about the smallest of details and we are unwilling to cut [corners] in delivering the best customer experience to the world. [It's] this relentless commitment to innovation and excellence [that] is the reason that our customer[s] choose [] our products and this will always be the driving force behind Apple. We are [building] the company for the long run and will continue to make great long-term decision[s]. We[] remain[] very, very confident in our strategy and will use our world-class skill and hardware, software and services to delight our customer[s]."

2.CFO Oppenheimer:

"We also added the iPad Mini to our iPad line-up. The iPad Mini has the iPad experience and we priced it aggressively at $329 delivering incredible value to our customers."

3.CEO, Cook on iPad Mini:

"one of the things we tried to is to create a product that people will love for month and years after they purchase it and continue using it in a robust way. So that’s what iPad Mini has been designed to do and you can only see that more broadly on iPad by looking at the usage statistics, as I had mentioned earlier this week, over 90% of the web traffic from tablets are from iPad. And so, Apple will not make a product that somebody may feel good about it for the moment that they’re paying for and then when they get it, they really ever use [ever], that’s not what we’re about, it’s not a kind of experience we want our customers to have. And I think when you – I would encourage you to use an iPad Mini and I don’t think we’ll be using anything other than maybe another iPad or something app that you do there."

4.CEO, Cook on low cost iPad competitors:

"We've seen low-cost challenges before and iPad continues to beat every other tablet on the market... it can be any price and so we think customers are very smart, we think they have very high expectations, we think that they want a device that can do more and we are confident that our focus on making the best product is what will win at the end of the day and so we will stay true to that."

Source: Q4'12 transcript earnings call http://seekingalpha.com/article/952971-apple-s-ceo-discusses-f4q12-results-earnings-call-transcript?part=single

Apple Financial News:

Meantime, Apple posted a 2012 $41.7B annual profit ($25.9B 2011), the second highest nominal profit in history, breaking into the Top 5 annual profits, all held previously, by Exxon-Mobil (see Wikipedia). Apple passed Exxon-Mobil as the largest public company by market capitalisation in the last twelve months (Q1 2012 - see Wolfram Alpha). Apple, on the Fortune 500, with this result moved from #17 to #5 (if the others did not move) as revenue rose to $156.5B from $108B in 2011.