Apple’s earnings call began with new CEO Tim Cook offering homage to Steve Jobs. He went on to note it set new records, sold a ton of phones, tablets and computers, and made a huge pile of money.
Apple’s iPhone remains the phone ranked with the highest customer satisfaction. Its iPad is storming into the enterprise market. The iPhone 4S is its best-selling iPhone ever. The Mac had its best quarter ever. It opened a ton of new stores. It’s making huge strides overseas, especially in Russia, Brazil, the middle east and China, now the number two country in terms of Apple revenue. It made $US26 billion in net revenue. With a “b”, dude, with a “b”.
Despite all that, it still didn’t beat analyst expectations. And why is that? Well, because Wall Street was looking for more iPhone sales last quarter. And for that, you can blame the iPhone 5 rumours that led people to hold off on buying a new phone last quarter. Or as Tim Cook politely said, “the reduction happened largely in the back half of the quarter as the speculation hit extreme highs”.
There was no similar slowdown on the iPad, which still sells like gangbusters. When asked about the Kindle Fire, Cook batted the question aside, noting that “we were responsible for three out of every four tablets sold”. Bang. That’s an intimidating stat to offer up to potential competitors (like you, Jeff Bezos).