iPhone sales catapult Apple to record results; profits soar
The iPhone is taking over Apple.
For the first time, the device that changed how people use mobile phones accounts for more than half of the behemoth company’s sales.
Apple Inc. on Tuesday said it sold 37 million iPhones in the last three months of 2011, vastly exceeding analyst estimates and propelling the company to record quarterly results.
The phone accounted for 53 percent of Apple’s revenue in the quarter. Though it has other hit products, like MacBooks and the iPad, they can’t keep up with the iPhone, whose sales more than doubled over last year from an already high level. The sales mean Apple is set to regain the position it briefly held earlier last year of being the largest maker of smartphones.
October saw Apple launching the iPhone 4S in the U.S. and some other countries. The phone was delayed for a few months, which meant that Apple’s results for the July-to-September quarter were uncharacteristically tepid.
It came back with a vengeance in the holiday season. On Tuesday, Apple said net income in its first quarter, which ended Dec. 31, was $13.06 billion, or $13.87 per share, up 118 percent from $6 billion, or $6.43 per share, a year ago. Analysts polled by FactSet were expecting earnings of $10.04 per share.
Revenue was $46.33 billion, up 73 percent from a year ago. Analysts were expecting $38.9 billion.
The Cupertino, Calif., company shipped 15.4 million iPads in the quarter, again more than doubling sales over the same quarter last year. The November launching of Amazon.com Inc.’s $199 Kindle Fire tablet didn’t appear to put much of a dent in the iPad’s sales, as some analysts predicted it would.
Apple shares rose $33.03, or 7.9 percent, to $453.53 in extended trading, after the release of the results.
Chief Financial Officer Peter Oppenheimer said the company expects earnings of $8.50 per share in the current quarter, and sales of $32.5 billion. Both figures are above the average estimate of analysts polled by FactSet, even though Apple usually low-balls its estimates.
More earnings, A11