Apple (NASDAQ:AAPL) has reported its best fiscal quarter ever, with revenue and profit figures surpassing analyst expectations. The numbers speak for themselves, both in nominal terms and with respect to year-on-year growth. In fact, this is the most profitable quarter in corporate history, surpassing the quarterly earnings records of Gazprom, Royal Dutch Shell and ExxonMobil, which were previously in the top three.

For the first fiscal quarter of 2015 (ending December 31, 2014), Apple reports a quarterly profit of $18 billion from revenue of $74.6 billion, a year-on-year revenue growth of 29.5% and profit growth of 27.2%. In this fiscal quarter, diluted earnings per share (EPS) of $3.06, a 47.8% increase from last year’s $2.07 diluted EPS. This surpasses analyst expectations of $2.60 earnings per share.

Guidance for second fiscal quarter indicates that Apple is likely to earn $52 to $55 billion in revenue. The company has announced cash dividends of $0.47 per share, payable in February.

In this quarterly report, we can glean a few things about Apple’s business so far. In gist, the company performs well during holiday seasons. The iPhone has been the biggest driver of revenue for the company in this quarter, so far, even amid the iPhone 6 having a slow start. The iPad, however, has performed dismally. And in a surprising twist, China has become a big driver of growth for the company, even with some initial hiccups in the launch and sales of the iPhone 6.

iPhone in the stocking. Apple’s best quarters prior to this one had been the first quarters of fiscal years 2012, 2013 and 2014, which fall in the months of October through December. This suggests that, as expected, holiday sales are a big revenue driver.  For Q1 FY2015, Apple sold 74.5 million iPhones, up from 51 million in the same period last year — a 46% year-on-year growth.  This is the first full fiscal quarter after Apple launched the iPhone 6 and 6 plus, and even with some initial concerns about the whether the bigger form factor of the plus will sell, as well as supply issues at the start of the iPhone 6’s product cycle, sales figures for Apple’s smartphones will suggest that it’s a runaway hit.

Will the iPad be sustainable? The short answer is “yes” — at least Apple CEO Tim Cook thinks so. For this quarter, iPad sales actually fell 21% year-on-year, which may be an indication that the company’s latest tablet lineup has weakened, even as the prices for previous-generation iPad Air and iPad Mini models have been reduced. One school of thought will say that iPad sales are being cannibalized by the iPhone 6 Plus on the low-end and the MacBook air on the higher-end. However, Cook is still optimistic about the product line, and that these sales figures are still within expected range. Cook admits that “the upgrade cycle is longer” compared to smartphones, speaking during investor guidance. “I believe that over long arc of time that the iPad is the great business, I also have visibility obviously of what’s in the pipeline and feel very, very good about that,” he adds.

Scaling the great wall. Apart from record-breaking revenues and profits in the past quarter, Apple is also seeing promise in a market that had been considered difficult for western firms to break into: China. Today’s largest economy is also the fastest-growing market for Apple’s goods. Revenue for this market amounts to $16.1 billion, comprising 21% of the company’s earnings during the period. This is a 70% growth from the same quarter in Fiscal Year 2014, and a 157% quarter-on-quarter growth.

This means Apple was able to bounce back after a disappointing iPhone 6 launch, in which the product was severely delayed in the market. Another feather on Apple’s cap: the iPhone has taken top spot in smartphone shipments in China, according to Canalys, even beating Xiaomi.

Watch out for April. Since taking over the reins, there has always been question whether Tim Cook will live up to his predecessor’s legacy. It was, after all, during the second tenure of Steve Jobs as chief executive when Apple bounced back with the iMac, then followed up by other revolutionary products like the iPod, iPhone, iPad, MacBook Air and the like. This record quarter is testament to Cook’s ability as a strategist, even as Apple has only been continuing existing product lines, so far.

This April, however, Apple expects to launch its first wearable, the Apple Watch. “The creativity and software innovation going on around Apple Watch is incredibly exciting and we can’t wait for our customers to experience them when Apple Watch becomes available,” says Cook. It may be argued that Apple is already coming late in the smartwatch game. But perhaps the quality of the platform and ecosystem will be the main differentiator, just as the apps and the App Store had been a game changer in the smartphone industry in 2007. “The number of developers that are writing apps more for it are impressive and we’re seeing some incredible innovation coming out there,” Cook adds.

Will 2015 be Tim Cook’s year? With an expanding business, impressive cash stockpile and an ambitious foray into the wearables market, it looks like an exciting year ahead for Apple.

The post Apple’s Q1 FY2015: Most Profitable Quarter in Corporate History appeared first on VR World.

Taiwan’s Financial Supervisory Commission (FSC) said on Jan. 7 that the nation is planning to allow Chinese nationals to open accounts with the offshore securities units (OSU) of Taiwanese brokerage firms while traveling in Taiwan and buy shares on the nation’s stock exchange.

“When they (Chinese) visit Taiwan, they will be able to not only buy local pineapple cakes but also buy local shares by opening accounts in Taiwan,” said William Tseng (曾銘宗), chairman for FSC.

Tseng made his remarks during a press conference. He said that Taiwan does not need to “negotiate” with China for the issue. Also, he said, Taiwanese nationals are able to open accounts to buy shares when traveling overseas without any restriction.

Taiwan opened its stock market to Chinese qualified domestic institutional investors in 2010, and the new mechanism will allow individuals, retail, and big investors to invest in Taiwan’s stocks as well. Tseng said, however, the new proposal will not be carried out immediately, now that it takes time for the government to work out eligibility requirements.

“Opening accounts in Taiwan through financial services’ institution offshore units will have to be convenient for the plan to succeed, and the government must also figure out how to cooperate with travel agencies in preventing money laundering,” Tseng said. “We need time to draw up complementary measures.”

The chairman said that Taiwan’s government cannot continue to ban foreign investors, including the Chinese, while Taiwanese are allowed to buy shares overseas.

“Liberalization is a trend,” Tseng said.

Meanwhile, Tseng also mentioned that it is harder for financial institutions to expand their business in China and allow Chinese nationals to buy shares in Taiwan, while the cross-strait service trade pact continues to stall at the legislature.

“Anyway, I would expect to see Chinese investors buy shares in Taiwan by the end of June or in the third quarter,” he said.

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As a part of Nvidia’s (NASDAQ:NVDA) GPU Technology Conference (GTC) the company holds a parallel track of presentations and events called the emerging companies summit (ECS). The ECS for next year’s GTC 2015 is coming with an even bigger bonus with the fact that the company with the best GPU technology startup will get $100,000 on the spot at GTC 2015’s ECS.

Nvidia has always been one to promote emerging companies and to support startups in the best ways that they can. In fact, some of Nvidia’s most famous attendees of their GPU Technology conference include GAIKAI which was sold to Sony (TYO: 6758) for $380 million. Don’t forget there’s also Oculus who makes the Oculus Rift VR headset which was sold to Facebook (NASDAQ: FB) for $2 billion as well as Natural Motion who was acquired by Zynga for $527 million.

Obviously Nvidia’s GTC attracts a decent amount of successful companies that want to get involved with Nvidia and GPU technologies and there’s clearly no end in sight. This is especially true now that Nvidia’s GPU technologies have finally found their way into mobile. In fact, we spoke with Nvidia and were informed that companies utilizing either discrete or SoC GPU graphics are eligible to apply for this prize, so there’s no reason to think too narrowly of what’s possible.

Nvidia states that it is looking for seed-funded companies, which have raised no more than $1 million and use GPU technologies in areas such as computing, visualization, analytics, entertainment, automotive, cloud or mobile. But I wouldn’t necessarily limit myself to those categories if you’ve genuinely got a novel idea and think that Nvidia might find it interesting how you utilize its GPUs. If you’d like to have your company enter, just follow this application and get your application in before January 19th, 2015.

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Twitter (NYSE:TWTR) today announced that it would be adding a Buy Now button to Twitter, specifically on mobile.

This is yet another move by Twitter to increase their profitability through finding more revenue making opportunities, this follows its partnering with Amazon to tag purchases on Twitter back in May for adding to an Amazon cart. If anything, this Buy Now button is an evolution of that idea, making Twitter the direct point of sale instead of trying to send you somewhere else to buy the item. Twitter has hundreds of millions of users and if it makes this work right, it may actually have figured out eCommerce through social media before another social media company, Facebook (NASDAQ:FB).

What this also does is give Twitter easier access to consumers’ credit cards, which could in turn allow Twitter to effectively become their own marketplace where bands, brands and other companies looking to sell something could sell direct through Twitter and use it as a marketplace in addition to a social media marketing platform. By incorporating Buy Now into Twitter as a whole, the company could effectively start to compete with the likes of Amazon and other etailers that generally have to wait until a consumer is referred to their site through Google or some other form of social media like Pinterest or Facebook. What will be interesting to see is whether or not Facebook and Pinterest will follow Twitter’s lead with this move and add similar Buy Now features to their websites as well. Even though, Pinterest technically already does this with many of its links, it is not directly selling the products, it’s merely a referral platform.

Twitter Buy Now

Twitter’s shares are currently up over 2.5% on this news, clearly indicating that investors are happy with the direction that Twitter is moving, and its really hard to argue with because it makes sense and doesn’t appear to be very intrusive at all. I suspect that consumers will welcome this feature and won’t have much backlash at all. Obviously, this Buy Now button isn’t some sort of wild innovation, but it is a way for social media to become more serious and Twitter to become more profitable.

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