Apple Profits $1.61 Billion, Highest Ever

By Marcus Yam
published

As the stock market closed today, Apple released its first fiscal quarterly earnings report filled with good news.

Apple set new records for itself with revenue of $10.17 billion and net quarterly profit of $1.61 billion, or $1.78 per diluted share. All figures are up from the same period last year’s $9.6 billion revenue, net quarterly profit of $1.58 billion, or $1.76 per diluted share. Gross margin remained the same at 34.7 percent.

The company is optimistic that it will stay profitable in the upcoming quarter. “Our outstanding results generated over $3.6 billion in cash during the quarter,” said Peter Oppenheimer, Apple’s CFO. “Looking ahead to the second fiscal quarter of 2009, we expect revenue in the range of about $7.6 billion to $8 billion and we expect diluted earnings per share in the range of about $.90 to $1.00.”

It’s no coincidence that we’ve been seeing more Apple products in people’s hands during their commute, or more MacBooks in coffee shops. Apple said that it sold 2,524,000 Macs computers during the quarter, representing nine percent unit growth over the year-ago quarter. 71 percent of those Macs were notebooks, partially thanks to the introduction of the newly designed unibody MacBooks.

Apple also sold more iPods than it ever before with 22,727,000 during the quarter, representing three percent unit growth over the year-ago quarter. Quarterly iPhone units sold were 4,363,000, representing 88 percent unit growth over the year-ago quarter (but down from the previous quarter).

“Even in these economically challenging times, we are incredibly pleased to report our best quarterly revenue and earnings in Apple history--surpassing $10 billion in quarterly revenue for the first time ever,” said Steve Jobs, Apple’s CEO.

Do you credit Apple's recent success to Steve Jobs? Or do you believe that Jobs' role in Apple is over perceived and the products that the company dishes out should be credited to others like Ive?

Marcus Yam
Marcus Yam
Marcus Yam served as Tom's Hardware News Director during 2008-2014. He entered tech media in the late 90s and fondly remembers the days when an overclocked Celeron 300A and Voodoo2 SLI comprised a gaming rig with the ultimate street cred.
14 Comments Comment from the forums
  • megabuster
    Congrats to Mac! I hope they hire more people in this struggling economy.
    Reply
  • njalterio
    Just a little while longer -

    I hope these Macs keep selling. Let Apple take on the responsibility needed to support lots of different devices, or fix security holes in the Mac OS. When these Macs become the mainstream; lack of support and security holes will hit users like a slap in the face.

    Call me bitter, but I am tired Apple fanatics telling me how great the Mac system is and quoting Mac ads "It just works" and "It has a solid Unix layer". Guess what morons; Unix protocol is simply a file structure standard with some common commands. It has NOTHING to do with virus protection or system stability. If anything I would expect the easily found source code in UNIX systems presents a greater security vulnerability once programmers feel the need to start writing malicious code for Macs. Obscurity is the only reason why Macs have a perceived advantage over Windows based computers.

    Keep on selling Apple, here's to watching you crash and burn.
    Reply
  • kawininjazx
    Nothing is more annoying than snobby mac owners than pissy PC owners. I have a nice Vista desktop, an aluminum Macbook and an iPhone and I love them all. Yes one day Macs will have virus problems and other issues, especially if they allow third party developers in, but relax and dont be so bitter.
    Reply
  • That's great to see that more than 10% of their sales is sheer profit. Ya think Macs might be slightly over priced?
    Reply
  • Here's an idea....dont buy one and stop complaining about mac's being over priced. If there is anything you should be pissed at is Alienware,Voodoo, Falcon northwest for their $4,000 and$5000 pc's with a fancy paint job and zip tied cabling with standard components kludged together with slight over clocking. Where the distain for them.
    Reply
  • The_Blood_Raven
    Falcon Northwest overclocks past 4.0 Ghz on quads and only uses cherry picked parts... The others suck I admit that.
    Reply
  • i dont know, but this looks kinda weird, all company are showing markets slowing down and suddenly comes apple with all this profits and records! and to be honest!, nobody knows if they fake this margins to keep selling the brand name and avoid any possible injury caused by the economy slowdown, i agree that apple hardware its great! but lets admit something... in software... with so little market share and very limited macs to program for! its to easy to call them the best pcs when you already know what to program for and call trash to windows when it work on every pc that you tryed... so please mac fans... windows work with windows! and for elites users linux in most cases... i apologize for my english, iam not from usa.
    Reply
  • tayb
    You would think that with an average margin of 34% they would cut back on some of the prices due to the major economic problems we are going to face over the next 6 months. Apple products are very poorly positioned for success in the upcoming economic climate they need to lower their prices or sales will drop dramatically.

    A $999 macbook with slightly outdated parts wasn't that bad of a deal (not a great deal though) 6-7 months ago but money is tight and people are being laid off. Starting prices at $999 for a notebook aren't going to cut it when the competition has notebooks and netbooks for a third of that price.

    OSX Leopard is a great operating system and some people PREFER it to Windows but when people start preferring to have more money in their wallet they will "tolerate" a windows based PC for half (or less) than what Apple is offering.
    Reply
  • V8VENOM
    I use Vista, XP, OS X. When I want to get stuff done, I use OS X. When I want to play games I use Vista or XP. When I code software for retail I use my MacPro running bootcamp on a Vista x64 drive.

    Microsoft is a 70% company -- meaning they'll do 70% of the work, and end user has to figure out the rest.

    Apple is a 90% company.

    If Microsoft don't change, they will become the minority market share. Both are needed to drive innovation.
    Reply
  • zodiacfml
    ipod...ipod..ipod.
    without the profits coming from ipods, apple may not have the cash to produce the new macbooks or iphones. add to that the excellent marketing the ipod makes to promote the apple brand.
    Reply