The earnings
Of course, the main news was supposed to be Apple's quarterly results, but Steve Jobs tends to upstage everything else.
Apple managed revenues of over $20 billion for the first time, yielding a profit of $4.31 billion. These represented jumps of 67 percent and 70 percent respectively on a year ago, despite gross margins falling. The revenues and profits were above analyst expectations, but margins were below.
"We are blown away to report over $20 billion in revenue and over $4 billion in after-tax earnings-both all-time records for Apple," said Steve Jobs, Apple's CEO. "iPhone sales of 14.1 million were up 91 percent year-over-year, handily beating the 12.1 million phones RIM sold in their most recent quarter. We still have a few surprises left for the remainder of this calendar year."
While iPhone sales were impressive, the 4.19 million iPads sold were a bit below many of the, admittedly bullish, forecasts. Apple also sold 3.89 million Mac - up 27 percent on a year ago - and the 9.05 million iPads sold were an 11 percent yearly decline.
Apple's shares were down around five percent in pre-market trading. This is probably partly down to the slightly disappointing margin and iPad figures and partly down to the amount of optimism already priced into its shares. Why didn't we sell everything and buy Apple shares three years ago? Why, why!?
UPDATE: Here's a chilling stat and graphic from asymco: 60 percent of Apple's sales this quarter came from products that didn't even exist three and a half years ago. It also observes that the peaks are all Q4, so the next quarter's figures should be scary - for Apple's competitors, that is.
