After strong holiday sales and the launch of the new iPhone 4S, allied to the much-delayed drop of iOS 5, we did indeed expect Apple’s earnings call to break records once again, and like clockwork, Tim Cook’s company did not disappoint shareholders.
Much like the results of a new Call Of Duty sales announcement, Apple seems to be making a habit of not only breaking its records, but smashing them in the kind of unprecedented fashion only ever demonstrated by a market-leader.
It’s fair to say 2011 was a bittersweet year for the Cupertino company, with the death of co-founder Steve Jobs a standout low in what was an otherwise impressive year on all fronts. Sales of the iPhone 4S were astronomical, with 16 units per second being shifted during the opening days of retail.
Speaking at the earnings call, Jobs’ replacement Tim Cook was quick to heap praise on the progress of the fruit company during the last three months:
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.
By new products, he’s likely pointing to the imminent iPad 3 release, with the device rumored to be hitting stores in March and boasting Retina display amongst a few other notable improvements. Sales of the third iPad installment will undoubtedly be spearheaded by Apple’siBooks Store now catering to textbooks; a service which launched last week and has already seen over 350,000 downloads in its first three days.
“We are very happy to have generated over $17.5 billion in cash flow from operations during the December quarter,” said Peter Oppenheimer, Apple’s CFO. “Looking ahead to the second fiscal quarter of 2012, which will span 13 weeks, we expect revenue of about $32.5 billion and we expect diluted earnings per share of about $8.50.”
To wrap up the whole call in simple figures, here’s the breakdown; Apple made $46.33 billion in revenue, 37.04 million iPhones were sold, 15.43 million iPads have been sold and last but bot the least; 5.2 million Macs were sold! Now those are pretty impressive numbers to drool over!
The numbers are certainly impressive, and with consumers showing increasing affinity to theApple brand, it would take a foolish man to bet against Apple’s earnings calls continuing to break records year-in, year-out.
As well as the iPad 3, we’re also expecting the iPhone 5 to drop later this year, and with the possibility of LTE support currently being suggested, the Apple juggernaut may just be out of rivals’ reach.
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