Apple rides out credit crunch with more record results

 

Gallery

By Simon Aughton

Posted on 22 Jan 2009 at 08:49

Apple has reported another quarter of record financial results, with revenue topping $10 billion for the first time.

The company took $10.17 billion in the past three months of 2008, making a record $1.6 billion profit. And that despite a marked slowdown in Mac sales growth, which were down on the previous quarter and only 9% higher year-on-year. Mac sales had previously achieved several consecutive quarters of huge growth.

The slowdown is due entirely to a slump in desktop sales, which fell by 25% year-on-year. By contrast, notebook sales, boosted by the release of new models during the quarter, continued their upward trajectory, rising by a third to a new record total of almost 1.8 million.

iPhone sales topped 4.3 million, bringing the total number sold to almost 17.4 million, easily surpassing the company's 10 million target for the end of the year.

But fears that the iPhone would hit iPod sales have yet to be realised. Apple sold a record 22.7 million iPods in the quarter.

Peter Oppenheimer, Apple's chief financial officer says the company is expecting revenue in the range of $7.6 billion to $8 billion in the current quarter, which would be a slight increase on last year, despite the difficult economic situation.