Apple on Thursday announced it had record revenue during the third quarter thanks in part to the huge success of its iPhone. However, for the second straight quarter, iPad sales were lower than what had been expected by Wall Street. Apple also said the forecast for the holiday would be less profitable.
In the past six weeks the company has rolled out a significant number of new products including new iPods, new iPhones, new larger iPads, new smaller iPads and even a new MacBook Pro. During its quarterly earnings call on Thursday, Apple executives said the Cupertino, California tech giant sold just fewer than 27 million iPhone during the three months of the third quarter. That was an increase of 58% and was significantly higher than what Wall Street had estimated.
During that same period, Apple had iPad sales of 14 million, which represented an increase for the company of 26%, but fell short of the 18.5 million that analysts on Wall Street had estimated.
The tech giant, said one Street analyst, was having rapid sales growth but had not reached the state of being insane. He said Apple had been able to grow the Mac, retain its place in the tablet market and appeared to be able to take whatever percentage it wanted to in the smartphone market. Therefore, said the analyst, how could investors be upset?
Apple also set a new record for revenue with $36 billion, which represented an increase of over 27% from the same quarter one year ago. Revenue was also higher than Street analysts had expected. Net profit was $8.3 billion, which was also an increase of more than 24%, but less than what had been expected from projections by Wall Street analysts.
