Tech —

Apple Q3 2008: Macs unstoppable, solid growth down the line

Despite an iPhone shortage, Apple had another spectacular quarter, largely due …

  Street estimates  Apple 3Q 08
Apple 3Q 07 Apple 2Q 08
Revenues
$ Billions
7.36 7.46 5.41 7.51
Earnings per share
Dollars
1.08 1.19 0.92 1.16
Macs shipped
Millions
2.2 2.496 1.764 2.289
iPods shipped
Millions
10.3 11.011 9.815 10.644
iPhones shipped
Millions
.7 .717 .27 1.703

Record gas prices, inflation, out control deficits, subprime crisis, a nation of whiners, all indicators of a troubled US economy—except in one place. The folks at Apple in Cupertino, California are living large on another record quarter for revenue and earnings. Mac sales were the movers in Apple's earnings report for the third fiscal quarter of 2008, and not surprisingly management was pleased.

"We're proud to report the best June quarter for both revenue and earnings in Apple's history," said Steve Jobs, Apple’s CEO. "We set a new record for Mac sales, we think we have a real winner with our new iPhone 3G, and we're busy finishing several more wonderful new products to launch in the coming months."

Continuing a trend that largely coincided with the switch to Intel CPUs, Mac sales continue to nearly double over the same period two years ago. Apple sold 943,000 desktops and 1,553,000 laptop computers, a 49 and 37 percent increase respectively over the same period last year. Revenue was up over 40 percent for each. It was a great quarter for Macs, and surprisingly for iPods too. 

It appears iPod sales have reached a state of equilibrium with approximately 10 to 11 million units sold per nonholiday quarter and 20 plus million during the holidays. Thus far, the iPhone does not appear to have cannibalized iPod sales, though the lower-priced iPhone 3G may change that beginning with the current quarter. However, in a reversal of recent quarters, the increase in unit sales outpaced revenue growth, up 12 percent and 7 percent respectively over last year. As for iPhone sales during the last quarter, the results were in line with expectations.

Staring in May, Apple began to run out of iPhones, and by June iPhone were no longer being sold. Consequently, those 717,000 iPhones should have been over a million. Of course, Apple has already sold 1,000,000 3G iPhones, but these numbers do matter. At the Keynote Macworld Expo in 2007, Steve Jobs predicted Apple would sell 10 million iPhones in CY 2008. Adding the first weekend of sales for the iPhone 3G, Apple has sold 3,410,000 iPhones so far this year, so only 6.5 million and change to go!

Channel Ars Technica