Apple has announced yet another record set of financial results, making a $6 billion profit in the quarter ending 25 December 2010.
The record profit came from a record revenue of $26.74 billion, $3 billion more Apple’s had forecast, and a 70% increase on the last quarter of 2009.
Apple sold 4.13 million Macs during the quarter, a 23% unit increase over the year-ago quarter; 16.24 million iPhones, up 86% unit growth; and 7.33 million iPads, taking the total since the tablet first went on sale in April to just under 15 million, way ahead of expectations.
The company even managed to shift 19.45 million iPods, down just 7%. But add iPhone sales and Apple is selling more portable media players than ever. Apple has now sold 298 million iPods since the first model went on sale in October 2001.
“We couldn’t be happier with the performance of our business, generating $9.8 billion in cash flow from operations during the December quarter,” said Peter Oppenheimer, Apple’s chief financial officer.
“Looking ahead to the second fiscal quarter of 2011, we expect revenue of about $22 billion,” he added, which would be a year-on-year increase of more than 20%, assuming the actual figure is, for once, not substantially higher than Oppenheimer’s typically conservative guidance.
The quarter saw an unusually sharp rise in software sales, up 25%, possibly due to the release of iLife ’11. With the Mac App Store having just launched, results for the current quarter will provide a clue to its impact.
