I’ve done extensive research on the company revealing its ‘Quantum Strategy’ in a paper for Organizational Dynamics, and though Apple’s results saw $50 billion wiped off its market value I don’t feel it is the first sign of strategic weakness as some analysts are suggesting.

Apple reported no rise in profits for the final quarter of 2012 and slightly missed revenue estimates, prompting speculation that its period of hyper-growth is coming to an end.

The company sold 47.8m iPhones over the Christmas quarter, missing a forecast average of around 50m and revenue growth of 18 per cent year on year to $54.5bn was below the $54.9bn forecast, while profits were flat on the previous year at $13.1bn.

But before we write Apple off with premature assessments, we need to appreciate that its so-called disappointing performance is still extraordinary by many measures, and that it has the capabilities to keep winning in its markets, which it may yet redefine with more blockbuster products.

Apple is thought by many to have posted poor results, but this would be a rushed assessment. Apple’s revenues continued growing at a fast pace, with an 18 per cent rise over the previous year and 25 per cent more when adjusting for the fact that this quarter was for a 13-week period while the previous year was for 14 weeks.

Profits were $13.1 billion, same as the previous year, but actually seven per cent higher if the 13 week vs 14 week issue is taken into consideration. Gross margin fell to 38.6 per cent compared to 44.7 per cent year-on-year, but Apple had prepared the market about the lower margin and actually delivered above its own guidance.

Lower margins would be expected given Apple’s rising sales in emerging economies, introduction of iPad mini and appearance of more competing products that are much cheaper. The 38.6 per cent margins in the markets where Apple operates are still extraordinary.

Speaking of emerging markets, Apple’s higher transparency in reporting sales by geography shows that its revenues in China went up 67 per cent in this quarter compared to last year, with a huge potential upside. Further, its products are on different stages of the product life cycle, a pretty robust risk management strategy.

Even if in the long term Apple has lost some of its innovative edge, its substantial liquid assets still give it an advantage in the technology market.

The main issue for the medium and long term is whether Apple has sustained its innovative capabilities, which seems likely given that it’s part of the company’s DNA. But the proof will be in the pudding, and we’ll know over the next 12 to 18 months.

What many forget though is Apple’s safety net of $137 billion in cash and liquid assets. Apple could easily buy any new technologies that appear to pose a threat to it, that offer synergies to its own offerings, or that can open up new markets for it.

Stock markets react, and sometimes overreact, immediately, but what matters is the big picture and Apple seems to be on a solid footing by that measure. Even though its shares fell based on the earnings announcement, this could be a useful correction.

Loizos Heracleous has authored six books and over 50 articles published in leading journals including the Harvard Business Review and MIT Sloan Management Review. His research has been honored by three noted Best Paper awards from the Academy of Management and received an Emerald Literati Award for 2007 for his research on the role of biometric technologies in service excellence, a second Emerald Award in 2009 for the Paper with the Best Practical Implications for his work on human resource strategy at Singapore Airlines, and a third award for the Paper with Best Practical Implications in 2010 for his article entitled “Can business learn from the public sector?” Loizos has trained or advised executives from several leading corporations including IBM, Total, Rolls-Royce, KPMG, Standard Chartered, O2, and Bank of China. He has been listed in the Marquis Who’s Who in the World since 2003. Before joining Warwick Business School, Loizos was Reader in Strategy at the Said Business School and Official Fellow of Templeton College at Oxford University, and Associate Professor of Business Policy at the National University of Singapore.

Yesterday, I reported that the new iPod Touch would ship with the A5x processor. That was a mistake in reporting. Greg Joswiak, the vice president of iOS and iPod product marketing, said that the new iPod Touch will ship with the A5 chip, the very same inside the iPhone 4S — not the A5X, which is used in the iPad (2012 model). This error in reporting made sense considering the announcement of new iPods: The A5x, scaled down, could provide the extra horsepower that games need. Or so it seemed.

After confirming with an Apple spokesperson earlier today, the upcoming iPod Touch does in fact have last year’s A5 chip. That information can further be confirmed on Apple’s features webpage for the iPod Touch. But in light of this error, a larger question arises: How is an A5 chip, the same as in the iPhone 4S, going to keep the iPod Touch relevant? The iPod Nano and Shuffle both have very specific functions; the Touch has always been an iPhone minus the phone — all of the capabilities without the girth, the two-year contract, or cellular service. That’s the price. Buy a phone and get an all-in-one device, or get the Touch, pay less, but split the cost between the iPod Touch and something else.

For most people, that’s a no-brainer — buy the iPhone. And with the ridiculous sales figures the iPhone has, Apple knows this. So who buys the iPod Touch? Simple: people who don’t need or want a new phone but still want the benefits of the latest iDevice. We all know parents who buy them for their kids — the responsible sort that doesn’t need a constant connection with their children through another line on that expensive family plan. Or it’s a gift to friends, family, and neighbors. The iPod Touch has always been relatively inexpensive yet remarkably useful, so year after year, it made for one of the best holiday buys.

That changed last year when Apple announced the iPhone 4S but no new iPod — not the Shuffle, not the Nano, and not the Touch. These devices were barely even discussed. Only the iPod Nano was mentioned, and only because Apple wanted owners to upgrade the firmware so they would have access to new watch faces.

Not updating the iPod Touch made sense. The only real difference between the A4 and A5 as far as most people were concerned was that the A5 was a dual-core CPU while the A4 had only one core. But there’s more: The A5 is an ARM Cortex-A9 with a PowerVR SGX543MP2 on a 45nm chip, clocked at 1GHz but scaled back to 800MHz for the iPhone 4S. The A4 is an ARM Cortex-A8 with a PowerVR 535 GPU on a 45nm chip, also scaled back to 800MHz. That’s a whole generation difference in ARM-processing technology.

The reason the iPod Touch never needed to be upgraded is simple enough. Business Insider reported that for the iPad 2, the cost of making the new A5 processor was 75% more expensive than the A4. Apple built the chip to fit in the iPad but didn’t manage to scale it down to the smaller, easier-to-fit-in-a-smartphone 32nm frame. With only a year for each new product and only seven months from the iPad to iPhone 4S, Apple didn’t manage to do that, and the same A5 chip went into the iPhone. This can account for a number of possible reasons why the 4S was such an iterative update. There simply wasn’t enough space to add in features like an LTE antenna or a larger battery.

And the iPod Touch? As a hugely profitable company, one that’s struggled to fit this processor into a larger device while simultaneously knowing that every phone has at least a two-year lifespan, there was only one smart business decision to make: don’t release a new iPod Touch. The old A4 was in tens of millions of iPhone 4s sold worldwide, and they were all capable of running the same applications as the newer iPhone 4S. Meanwhile, the manufacturing of the iPod Touch, with no changes, gets cheaper and cheaper, and the product itself makes money either way. And most customers don’t know the difference because unlike the iPhone, the iPod Touch isn’t numbered. We media label them by generation number … but even in conversation, it’s still the same iPod Touch.

So the new iPod Touch? There’s very little new or noteworthy about it. Just like the iPhone, the iPod Touch lives on a two-year cycle because it has all of the same hardware. Only this time, for this new model, that hardware is already a year old.

Don’t get me wrong. You can read Meghan’s impressions on the iPod Touch for judgment on the actual device. And the upgrades since the last model are pretty major: It has the same 5MP camera that was in the iPhone 4, Siri, a widescreen display … and it even comes in six colors. It may well make for an excellent buy or a great gift.

But don’t be fooled — the iPod Touch doesn’t have new hardware. It has a bigger screen, but that’s it. Everything else is from either the iPhone 4S or from the iPhone 4 (like the camera). In one year’s time, the current iPod Touch will be two generations behind the next iPhone, which is historically when devices stop getting regular software updates and when applications require more power than the older devices can afford. In effect, Apple has limited the lifespan of the iPod Touch by a whole year by using an older processor and older parts while still charging a $300 premium for the device.

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RE: IMPORTANT CORRECTION (URGENT.)

I sigh. I’m frustrated. I didn’t do my job the best I could and something must have slipped. I kick myself for thinking that I might have missed something important or misspelled a name. Even in the era of fantastic spell-checking, that still happens. All that happens before I even open the message from Company X’s public relations team.

Then I realize it’s not a correction. It’s a “clarification” or an “important distinction.” It’s some kind of sick play to get the company represented in a more positive light. But every single time it’s labeled a “factual error” by either the company that is trying to get a little bit of more positive play or the public relations person trying to get me to change the story.

“I must stress that I am not talking about just language used (I take [former VentureBeat executive editor] Owen’s point — you’re not our PR agency!) but describing us as an online service is incorrect — we are a mobile platform,” one public relations representative said in an email.

I then had to take a few minutes to explain that an operating system like OS X or something like Facebook — not his client’s video sharing application — was a platform. That’s, of course, going off the definition of being able to build smaller pieces of software within the framework of a larger piece of software that runs all of them.

Three levels of abstraction away, said video sharing application is a platform. Except that is incredibly confusing because it also throws it into the same category as other “platforms” like Facebook. And it’s also insanely confusing for readers, who odds are also aren’t quite sure what actually codifies a “platform.”

So here I am, trying to correct your correction. During this time — which is usually during typical office hours — I spend trying to spar with you, I could have been writing additional stories. But I’m operating under the false assumption that I might need you to pitch me additional stories and I opened your message under the false assumption that I had apparently written something that was factually incorrect.

Here’s the thing, guys. You are not the gatekeepers of information. There are other ways to get the story. If it’s important enough, I and every other reporter out there in the world will find a way to get the story. It’s our job to be scrappy and it’s our job to be relentless when trying to figure out the best story.

You can either help us by pitching us stories with useful information and facilitating the communication. Or you can insult every one of us for the sake of getting a single word changed to something that is an even worse buzzword and run the risk of sabotaging an otherwise useful relationship. We here at VentureBeat already put up with your insipid demands for embargoes over new cloud computing software model number 771.

I’m personally going to ask you guys to stick to your guns and help us do our job. It make things much easier for all of us.

Lynley out.

(Also, everyone is banned from using the word “platform” from here on out.)