The company broke its own records posting $46.3bn in revenues for its first quarter 2012 (to December 31), boosted by the sale of 37 million iPhones 4S.
"We’re thrilled with our outstanding results and record-breaking sales of iPhones, iPads and Macs. Apple’s momentum is incredibly strong, and we have some amazing new products in the pipeline," said Tim Cook, Apple’s new CEO.
The world’s largest technology company had posted a mediocre last quarter, missing some analysts expectations. This was blamed on customers waited for the next generation of products.
But another successful iPhone launch means Apple has posted a record $13.06bn in profits for the quarter and is now sitting pretty with $100bn in cash.
To put the success in perspective, its gross margin is 44.7%. The success seems to have even surprised Apple, who had issued guidance of $9.30 per share. It garnered $13.87 per share – an astonishing 33% higher than expected.
The 37m iPhones sold was a 128% unit growth over the year-ago quarter. Apple also sold 15.43m iPads during the quarter, a 111% unit increase, and 5.2m Macs, a 26 percent unit increase.
Smartphones and iPads appear to be chipping away at one of Apple’s staple products, however, only selling 15.4m iPods, a 21% unit decline from the year-ago quarter. Analysts were initially concerned at the effect of Amazon’s Kindle Fire tablet, which launched in the quarter as cannibalising iPad sales. It appears to have little to no effect over the Christmas period.
The company has a good outlook for 2012, the iPad 3 is expected to launch in March, a new Macbook rumoured to have a touchscreen is meant to be launching sometime in the next quarter, the iPhone 5 (a 4G LTE device) in the third quarter, and the long rumoured Apple iTV in the fourth quarter.
