Apple profits soar beyond expectations

Apple seems to be doing pretty well these days.

For its fiscal third quarter, the company reported profits of 92 cents a share after the close of the stock market Wednesday, 9 cents higher than Wall Street was expecting and 26 cents better than the company's own projections. And the magic number? Apple reported selling what appears to be 270,000 iPhones during the two days before the quarter ended on June 30.

UPDATE 2:14 P.M. PDT: Apple CFO Peter Oppenheimer has confirmed 270,000 iPhones were sold in those two days.

Revenue for the quarter was $5.4 billion, as compared with Wall Street's expectations of $5.2 billion and Apple's own projections of $5.1 billion. Mac shipments grew 33 percent compared with last year, while iPod shipments were up 21 percent.

The iPhone category includes "iPhones and Apple-branded and third-party iPhone accessories," so it was not immediately clear from the press release whether the 270,000 units refers to iPhones alone or iPhones plus cases, headsets, etc. The iPhone numbers will be closely scrutinized coming off of Tuesday's news that AT&T only activated 146,000 iPhones.

The company will hold a conference call at 2 p.m. PDT to discuss its results, and hopefully we'll get more clarity on the iPhone shipments then.

UPDATE 2:08 P.M. PDT: Apple's overall profit for the quarter was $818 million, that's a 73 percent jump compared with last year, when third-quarter profit was $472 million. Revenue was up 24 percent compared with the same period last year when it was $4.37 billion.

Notebook sales led the charge for the Mac division. Apple shipped 1,130,000 MacBooks and MacBook Pros during the quarter, up 79 percent compared with last year. Desktop shipments were also up, 634,000 units this year compared with 529,000 units last year.

Apple doesn't break out its iPod results by category, but it was interesting to note that while shipments increased to 9.8 million compared with 8.1 million units during the same period a year ago, revenue increased by a smaller amount. Apple's iPod revenue was $1.57 billion during the quarter, compared with $1.5 billion the same time last year.

I contacted an Apple spokesman about the iPhone numbers, to verify whether 270,000 units means 270,000 iPhones or 270,000 iPhones plus accessories. I hadn't heard back as the conference call was about to start, with soothing classical guitar in the background.

[texasags]

Not quite two days

Apple reported selling what appears to be 270,000 iPhones during the two days before the quarter ended June 30.

No, they sold 270,000 iPhones in 30 hours, not two days, and the stores were only open about half that time. As far as the 146,000 activations, if the phone was purchased online, it could not have been activated. It would be interesting to know the split between Apple/AT&T store and online purchases.

I'd say it was an impressive showing.

[johntae71]

The numbers look ugly for ATT

270,000 Iphones sold in 30 hours
146,000 activated in 48 hours.

That's a short fall of 124,000 phones that didn't get activated withing 48 hours. If you're REALLY generous and say 2/3 were online sales and thus unavailable for activation that leaves roughly 41,334 phones that were potentially effected by failure to activate. ATT claims 10,000 or so.

The numbers don't add up do they?

[HeartofHistory]

How are sales counted?

I have no idea how sales are counted. I ordered my iPhone through
the online Apple Store on the Saturday (the 30th) but didn't receive
it (and hence activate it) until mid-July.

In my mind, that means the sale shows up on Apple's sold list, but
not yet on AT&Ts activated list. Is that how it works?

[sciontcya]

Stat's

I think AAPL is intentionally down-playing the numbers on
iPhones.
What other phone or device sold that many in less than 30 hours?
Everyone on the web is down on the 270k figure, but I can't
believe that they know it's for less than two days!

[Vegaman_Dan]

Congratulations

I have to congratulate Apple on a wonderful return on their sales figures. The Macintosh line had great increases in sales which is being overshadowed by 'disappointing' sales of the iPhone according to the media. The numbers being tossed about by Apple, the media, and fans seem to be changing by the minute so I'm not sure how much faith we can put into that currently. You can sell a lot of phones, but if they are returned without being activated, does that count as a sale? I'm not sure.

Take the iPhone out of the equation and they did very well indeed.

[Vista_Power]

The iPhone Did Very Well Too.

Please get your facts straight: the iPhone sold 270,000 units in 30
hours.

This is an amazing number. Visit:

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?
pid=20601087&sid=aoLLNchfeHec&refer=home

[DayNovo]

Jobs continues to drive the Apple train

While the results came in at the higher end of expectations, they do reinforce Apple's reliance upon the Jobs machine.
For more consideration click:
http://sneakybusiness.typepad.com/sneaky/2007/07/apple-earning-1.html

[peterjstewart]

Go on...give credit where credit is due

Not quite sure why everyone is giving Apple such a hard time. Their revenue is way up...iphone sales of 270K (that's at least $135 Million in revenue) is excellent...and the device is a true first to market innovation. I just showed the iPhone to my entire executive team (who are quite tech savy) and they were all extrememly impressed. Well done Apple! And I'm not even a stock holder.

[cyclelogicpress.com]

Master

"Apple seems to be doing pretty well these days."
Yuk, yuk ... the master of understatement! :)

[petersmagnusson]

270K iPhones, but notice the laptop sales?

Tom, check out the PDF that Apple distributed with the earnings call, and you can confirm the 270K units number (it's on the "iPhyone and Related Products and Services).

But as I argue on my blog (shameless cross-posting to http://petersmagnusson.com) the real story is the strength of laptop sales. indeed, of the $1B year-over-year growth in revenue, almost half is from growth in revenue from laptops!

which puts into perspective the delay of the release of OS X 10.5 caused by iPhone-related engineering crunch ...

[J.G.]

Sales are of iPhones in hand

Online orders were not among the 270,000 iPhones sold.

The figure is also only for iPhones, though some naysayers are pretending it includes accessories.

[rbyasumura2]

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