Apple Trifecta Sets Records

By Michael Santo
Executive Editor, RealTechNews

The Apple trifecta of the iPhone, the iPod, and Mac PCs helped Apple to its best quarter in history, with the highest revenue and earnings in Apple’s history.

That magnificent trio, selling 2.3 million iPhones, 22 million iPods, and 2.3 million Macs, resulted in $9.6 billion in total revenue, $1.58 billion in profit, and $1.76 income per diluted share as Apple announced its fiscal 2008 Q1 results on Tuesday.

iPods sales were only up 5% year-to-year, but revenue increased by 17%. iPhone sales, of course, don’t have an available year-to-year comparison, and won’t until June.

Meanwhile, splitting the Mac sales into desktop and notebook sales, Apple sold 977,000 desktop Macs and 1.34 million notebooks during the quarter. Desktop sales were up 53% year-to-year, while notebook sales increased 38%.

In a press release, Apple, CEO Steve Jobs said:

“We’re thrilled to report our best quarter ever, with the highest revenue and earnings in Apple’s history. We have an incredibly strong new product pipeline for 2008, starting with MacBook Air, Mac Pro and iTunes Movie Rentals in the first two weeks.”

In that same press release, CFO Peter Oppenheimer said,

“Apple’s revenue grew 35 percent year-over-year to $9.6 billion, an increase of almost $2.5 billion over the previous December quarter’s record-breaking results. 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.”

In the follow-up conference call, Apple chief operating officer Tim Cook indicated that Apple is still confident of making its goal of selling 10 million iPhones by the end of this year. He also stated that “The Macintosh business is on fire.”

Despite all this, the stock market drop and housing slump have not passed over Apple. At the time of this writing the stock is down nearly $18, over 11% in after-hours trading.