Return of the Mac
In the quarter ending 29th December 2007 Apple shipped 2,319,000 Macintosh computers – an increase of 44 per cent on the same quarter the year before. This brought about a revenue increase from Macs of 47 per cent in those same time periods.
The already apparent ‘halo effect’ from the popularity of the iPod seems to have really kicked in, boosted no doubt by the colossal amount of attention given to the Iphone. The inevitable teething troubles of Windows Vista have led to quite a few defections to the Apple camp too.
Apple’s total revenue for the quarter was $9.6 billion, up from $7.1 billion a year before and net profit was $1.58 billion ($1.76 EPS) up from $1 billion ($1.14 EPS). Apart from Macs, Apple sold over 22 million iPods and 2.3 million iPhones in final three months of 2007.
Peter Oppenheimer, Apple’s CFO, said: “Our strong results produced cash flow from operations of over $2.7 billion during the quarter, yielding an ending cash balance of over $18.4 billion. Looking ahead to the second quarter of fiscal 2008, we expect revenue of about $6.8 billion and earnings per diluted share of about $.94.” These predictions were below analyst expectations and contributed to a 3.5 per cent drop in Apple’s share price.
