Horace Dediu

'Simply breathtaking': Apple's growth profile in two charts

Visualizing Apple's growth in earnings, revenue and margins

FORTUNE -- Asymco's Horace Dediu has posted a couple of charts that show better than I could tell the significance of Apple's (AAPL) quarterly results.

The first graphs the rise in Apple's growth- and operating-margin percentages. Dediu's two-word TwitPic comment: "Simply breathtaking."

Below, an up-to-date version of the chart with which Dediu tracks Apple's quarterly net sales and earnings growth rates.

Click here to read his commentary.

Chart of the day: The Apple Store trounces Tiffany's

In dollars per sq. ft., the stores are 17 times more efficient than the average mall outlet

For more on Apple's (AAPL) retail efficiency, see Horace Dediu's analysts at Asymco.com.

'You come for the product, you stay for the ecosystem'

The latest comScore data suggest that half of iPhone buyers are repeat customers

Here's a lesson from Asymco's Horace Dediu in how to add color and value to raw data.

First he did what comScore should have done when it released its February U.S. mobile phone market report: He graphed the data, showing not only comScore's latest numbers, but the trend lines dating back two years. (See chart at right.)

Then he correlated MORE

Asymco: Google makes only $1.70 a year per Android device

Apple, by contrast, generated more than $575 for every iOS device it sold last year

"In terms of returns, Android is sustainable," writes Asymco's Horace Dediu at the end of a long analytical piece posted Monday. "However, in relative terms the value created leaves much to be desired."

That's quite an understatement, especially when you consider how much Apple (AAPL) makes on its mobile devices. According to Dediu, Apple generated $576.30 per MORE

The S&P 500 with and without Apple: Round 2

The picture is even more striking than it was a month ago

In February, Jonathan Golub at UBS started a new fashion on the Street by publishing two versions of his regular quarterly forecast: one for the S&P 500, and another for what he called the "S&P 500 ex-Apple."

Strategists at Morgan Stanley, Goldman Sachs, Barclays and Wells Fargo soon followed suit.

In Golub's February calculation, the S&P 500's Q1 2012 earnings were on MORE

Asymco: Can the iPad sustain 150% yearly growth?

There is a precedent: iPhone sales have doubled, on average, every year since 2007

The chief difference between the independent analysts who follow Apple (AAPL) and their counterparts on Wall Street is that the independents put a premium on being right.

The professionals, with all due respect, seem to care more about not over-promising or straying too far from the consensus. (See here, here and here, for example.)

So investors who want informed MORE

Headed for Los Angeles

If you're in L.A. Thursday or Friday, join us at the Apple Investors Summit

We'll be speaking, along with Steve Jobs biographer Walter Isaacson, Apple (AAPL) co-founder Steve Wozniak, Fortune's Adam Lashinsky, Asymco's Horace Dediu, Bullish Cross's Andy Zaky, Posts at Eventide's Robert Paul Leitau, AAPLPain's Travis Lewis, The Street's Jason Schwarz and many more.

To register, click here.

U.S. smartphones: Inching toward 1 million per week

Unless something changes fast, they're all going to be Androids and iPhones

ComScore issued its January snapshot of the U.S. mobile phone market Tuesday -- with accompanying pie chart here -- but if you want to understand what the numbers mean you should check out Horace Dediu's Wednesday morning report on Asymco.com.

Dediu seems to be the only analyst who tracks these monthly reports over time. Graphing two years of comScore data MORE

Apple as the new GM or IBM

Is it a flash in the pan or one of those rare companies that defines an era?

Investors, analysts and business historians have been struggling in the weeks since Apple's (AAPL) most recent earnings report to make sense of this corporate oddity: a mega-cap company ($487.1 billion) that grows like a start-up (first quarter earnings up 115.7%).

Since  November, when it pulled decisively away from Exxon Mobil (XOM), Apple has been the MORE

Who first called Apple at $500?

Technically, it was Hudson Square's Daniel Ernst. But we have a few caveats.

Eyebrows were raised in October 2010 when Daniel Ernst hiked his 12-month Apple (AAPL) price target from $300 a share to $500. But perhaps drawing attention to himself was the point. The senior analyst at Hudson Square Research is now a regular contributor on CNBC and his current price target -- $700 -- is once again the Street's MORE