Apple’s Big October iPhone Bet Pays Off
Thursday, January 26th, 2012Apple’s revenues topped $46 billion in the final three months of 2011 — the highest quarterly revenue and earnings in Apple’s history, the company told investors. The iPhone was Apple’s biggest revenue generator in the final quarter of last year’s calendar, representing 53 percent of total sales.
“We made a very bold bet entering the quarter as to what the demand would be,” said Apple CEO Tim Cook late Tuesday. “And as it turns out, despite it being a very bold bet, we were short of supply throughout the quarter and did end with a significant backlog.”
Apple’s iPhone sales, which grew 128 percent year-over-year to a record 37 million units, blew past even the most optimistic Wall Street estimates. During Apple’s conference call with financial analysts, Apple CFO Peter Oppenheimer compared this “to 40 percent growth for the smartphone market overall in the December quarter, based on the latest published estimate from IDC.”
Piper Jaffray’s analysts believe the results of Apple’s iPhone 4S launch reinforce the investment firm’s data. “iPhone re-buy rates could be as high as 94 percent, setting up a monster iPhone 5 upgrade, which we expect in August,” wrote Gene Munster and Andrew Murphy in an investor note late Tuesday.
Breathtaking Customer Reception
Cook attributed the popularity of Apple’s new iPhone 4S to “a breathtaking customer reception” of iOS 5, new Siri technology that enables customers to use their voices to send messages, place phone calls and schedule appointments, and an “incredible camera with advanced optics.”
Oppenheimer also noted that nearly all the top Fortune 500 companies now approve and support iPhone on their networks, including businesses covering the financial services, transportation, healthcare, insurance and consumer products sectors.
“Many of these companies are developing and deploying mission-critical iPhone apps to help improve productivity and give employees secure…
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