Apple Posts Terrific Earnings as iPhone, Mac Sales Soar

Market research firm IDC was ready to sound Apple’s downward spiral, claiming the company’s shipments of Mac computers had dropped 12.4 percent for calendar Q2 2009 (which is Apple’s fiscal Q3 2009).  However, when all was said and done, Apple came out on top and had the last laugh over analysts that have perpetually doubted it.

Despite attacks from its competitors about its offerings being overpriced, small price cuts help propel Apple’s Mac sales to 2.6 million units, a growth of over 4 percent year to year.  This beat Gartner’s forecast of 2.5 percent growth, and handily beat the IDC’s gloomy forecast. 

Predictably, Apple also shipped a lot of iPhones — 5.2 million to be precise.  That represents an incredible 626 percent growth over last year, though missing the mark of 6.9 million that the 3G set during its first quarter of availability.  The iPhone news was so good it overshadowed the decline in iPod sales by 7 percent to 10.2 million units.  Perhaps some iPod users turned to the iPhone.

Steve Jobs, Apple’s CEO, back from his medical leaved cheered, “We’re making our most innovative products ever and our customers are responding.  We’re thrilled to have sold over 5.2 million iPhones during the quarter and users have downloaded more than 1.5 billion applications from our App Store in its first year.”

Apple’s quarterly income soared from $7.46B USD last year to $8.34B USD this year.  Its profits likewise rose from $1.07B USD to $1.23B USD, a 15 percent increase.  Including accounting of iPhone and Apple TV based subscription services, which are accounted for over their lifetime the GAAP-adjusted revenue and profit were $9.74B USD and $1.94B USD, respectively.

Peter Oppenheimer, Apple’s CFO predicted the Apple train would keep rolling stating, “We’re extremely pleased to report record non-holiday quarter revenue and earnings and quarterly cash flow from operations of $2.3 billion.  Looking ahead to the fourth fiscal quarter of 2009, we expect revenue in the range of about $8.7 billion to $8.9 billion and we expect diluted earnings per share in the range of about $1.18 to $1.23.”

Apple will release its latest version of OS X, Snow Leopard, in September.  New iPods are also expected for the fall.