The Register®

Original URL: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/07/21/apple_q3_2009_earnings/

Apple profits up 15 per cent (again)

5.2 million iPhones sold

By Rik Myslewski in San Francisco

Posted in Hardware, 21st July 2009 20:59 GMT

Watch Now : Virtual Machine Movement with Hyper-V

The global economic Meltdown may be tightening belts worldwide, but they're not feeling the squeeze in Cupertino.

Apple announced [1] Tuesday that its third fiscal 2009 quarter, which ended on June 30th, saw the company's year-on-year quarterly revenue rise to $8.34bn and its net quarterly profit to $1.23bn. That's up from $7.46bn and $1.07bn in the same quarter last year, an increase in profits of a hair under 15 per cent.

Apple's previous quarter wasn't too shabby either. It saw an increase in profits of 15.2 per cent [2], year-on-year, with revenue of $8.16bn and net income of $1.05bn.

The numbers don't lie: Apple is on a roll.

Perhaps Apple's numbers reflect what Intel's CEO Paul Otellini suggested during his company's earnings report last week: that the industry is beginning to benefit from "improving conditions in the PC market segment."

That certainly seems true for such tech-industry big boys as Otellini's Intel and Google, which reported that their recent quarters had seen a $1bn pre-EU-fine profit [3] and a $1.48bn profit [4], respectively.

Apple quarterly numbers were juiced by a 2.6 million Macs sold during the quarter, a four per cent increase over those of the same quarter last year.

Sales of the iPhone increased as well, with 5.2 million sold during the quarter. That's a 626 percent unit growth over the year-ago quarter, even though the iPhone 3GS didn't hit the market until June 19th, less than two weeks before the quarter's end.

It's introduction, it appears, has been a success - so much so that Apple says [5] over a million were sold in its first weekend of its availability.

Peter Oppenhimer, Apple's CFO, projects that the good times will continue to roll. "We’re extremely pleased to report record non-holiday quarter revenue and earnings and quarterly cash flow from operations of $2.3 billion," he said in a canned statement. "Looking ahead to the fourth fiscal quarter of 2009, we expect revenue in the range of about $8.7 billion to $8.9 billion." ®