Despite the doom and gloom all around due to the recession, Apple has posted its best second quarter earnings results in company history.
Yes, Apple is making more money off each sale than it did last year. Gross margin was 36.4 percent, up from 32.9 percent in the year-ago quarter.
As much PC/Mac talk goes on here though, it wasn’t sales of computers that gave Apple its recession-beating numbers. In fact, sales of Mac desktops and notebooks at 2.22 million is a 3 percent decline from a year ago. iPods were up just 3 percent, selling an impressive 11.01 million during the quarter. The real growth came from the iPhone, selling 3.79 million, representing 123 percent unit growth over the year-ago quarter.
“We are extremely pleased to report the best non-holiday quarter revenue and earnings in our history,” said Peter Oppenheimer, Apple’s CFO. “Apple’s financial condition remains very robust, with almost $29 billion in cash and marketable securities on our balance sheet. Looking ahead to the third fiscal quarter of 2009, we expect revenue in the range of about $7.7 billion to $7.9 billion and we expect diluted earnings per share in the range of about $.95 to $1.00.”
