Apple is on a roll, and the company shows no sign of slowing down.

After the close of the stock market Wednesday, Apple reported profits of $818 million, or 92 cents a share, for its fiscal third quarter. That’s a 73 percent jump compared with last year, when third-quarter profit was $472 million. It’s 9 cents higher than Wall Street was expecting and 26 cents better than the company’s own projections. Strong Mac and iPod sales led the charge, but Apple additionally has a third business these days.

The company reported selling 270,000 iPhones during the 30 hours before the quarter ended on June 30. That’s at the upper end of what estimates were going into iPhone weekend, though far below some of the extremely high estimates that surfaced following the launch. Still, some were anticipating a smaller number after AT&T reported activating 146,000 iPhones during the same period.

Apple shares were up $12.26, or nearly 9 percent, to $149.52 in after-hours trading.

Revenue for the quarter was up 24 percent to $5.4 billion, as compared with $4.37 billion for the same period a year ago. That tops Wall Street’s expectations of $5.2 billion and Apple’s own projections of $5.1 billion.

As predicted, however, the iPhone stole the show. Oppenheimer said Apple now expects to ship its 1 millionth iPhone by the

He acknowledged the activation problems experienced by some iPhone customers during the early days of iPhone sales. “We would like to apologize to those customers for a less than perfect experience,” Oppenheimer said, noting that most of the problems were fixed during the first week of sales.

Oppenheimer confirmed that Apple is receiving payments from AT&T related to the sale of iPhones, but he didn’t want to discuss the specifics of the agreement amoung the two companies. Gene Munster, an analyst with Piper Jaffray, believes AT&T is paying Apple about $11 a month per new iPhone customer, or about $3 a month for existing AT&T customers who switched to the iPhone.

Apple will recognize revenue related to its agreement with AT&T in the company’s fourth quarter, which ends in September, Oppenheimer said.

Tim Cook, Apple’s chief operating officer, reiterated the company’s goal of selling 10 million iPhones by the end of 2008. He additionally confirmed that the company would have an iPhone for the European market by the end of the year, though he did not specify where it would seem beyond “a few major countries.”

“It will not be easy to build in that business, our competitors are large and entrenched,” Cook said.

Thanks CNET

Original post by admin