Apple Inc, on Tuesday reported that its sales rose 24 percent and its profits increased 21 percent from last year’s quarter. You may be wondering, but Apple says this is a bad quarter for the company.
Apple’s missed its forecast revenue, its earnings per share (EPS) and iPhone sales this third fiscal quarter, according to Wall Street analysts.
Net Income of the world’s most valuable company this third fiscal quarter soared to $8.8 billion or earnings per share to $9.32. Analysts forecasted per share earnings to be at $10.36.
Total sales revenue for Cupertino based company was $35 billion, shorter than what analysts’ estimates of around $37.2 billion.
However, good news is Apple sold 17 million iPads, a record. The launch of its latest iPad 3 in US in March and in other markets around the world last quarter increased sales. Besides, Apple’s decision to lower the price of its earlier iPad 2 to $100, also helped boost sales of iPad in schools and elsewhere. In schools particularly, number of iPads sold were twice that of Macs.
But concerned analysts said that the lower price of iPad is decreasing revenues. On average revenue per iPad fell to $538 from $653 last quarter a year ago. Moreover, introduction of the iPad 3 in China also didn’t help much.
But the main disappointment was Apple’s top selling product, the iPhone. Apple says it sold 26 million iPhones last quarter- which is a steep drop of sales numbers from earlier quarters.
Apple has warned that it iPhones may experience declining sales from past two quarters, but still Wall Street analysts expected that 29 million iPhones will be sold.
Tim Cook, Apple’s CEO in a conference responded to investors that the iPhone’s declining sales can be contributed to the rumors about the soon to be launched “4G iPhone or iPhone 5” and of course to the weak European economy. However demand in China remains strong, despite the reports that electronics sales are slumping there, he said.
Meanwhile, the App Store now has over 650,000 apps which include 225,000 dedicated iPad apps and Apple has paid about $5.5 billion to iOS developers.
