Apple Q4 net zooms on strong iPod, Mac sales

SAN JOSE: Apple Computer said on Wednesday its fiscal fourth-quarter profit rose 27%, well past analyst expectations, boosted by sizzling sales of its iPod music players and Macintosh computers.

Apple earned $546m in the quarter ended September 30, compared with net income of $430m in the same period last year. Revenue for the quarter totaled $4.8bn, a 32% jump from $3.68bn last year.

Apple’s iPod-iTunes juggernaut has helped the company reap record profits in recent years, but some of the earnings might be eroded when Apple later restates some quarterly reports due to earlier mishandling of stock options accounting. The restatements could lead to a “significant adjustment,” Apple said on Wednesday. For the quarter, Apple said it shipped 8.7m iPods, up 35% from the year-ago period. A good back-to-school season also helped Apple ship a record 1.6m computers, up 30% from a year earlier.

Among computers, laptop sales were particularly strong: shipments rose 56% to almost 1m units, while revenue climbed 63% to $1.3bn from the previous year. Sales for all computers reached $2.2bn from a year-ago, while sales of iPods reached $1.56bn, up 29%. The iconic portable music player, first introduced in October ’01, accounted for about a third of Apple’s quarterly sales.

“This strong quarter caps an extraordinary year for Apple,” Jobs stated. “Selling more than 39m iPods and 5.3m Macs while performing an incredibly complex architecture transition is something we are all very proud of.”

Unsatisfied with its previous chip suppliers, Apple began switching its computers to Intel-based microprocessors in January. The Intel chips have a similar design, or “architecture,” to ones used in rival computers running on Microsoft’s Windows operating system.

A little more than half of the 323,000 computers sold in Apple’s retail stores during the quarter were to people who had never owned a Mac before, Apple’s chief financial officer Peter Oppenheimer said during an analyst conference call. “We were thrilled by that,” he said.

For the full fiscal year, Apple said it earned $1.99bn, up from $1.335bn the previous period. Revenue was $19.3bn, up from $13.9bn last year.