Well, it’s that time of year again. But what time of year, do you ask? The Q3-earnings time of year. Today, Apple announced their earnings for the third-fiscal quarter, with $472 million of profit, bringing their total revenue to $4.37 billion. Apple’s earnings for this quarter beat out the analyst consensus of $.44, which actual earnings of $.54. Apple also announced that they had shipped 1,327,000 Macs and 8,111,000 iPods over the past quarter, making a 12% growth in Mac sales and a 32% growth in iPod sales over the past year. Hopefully these Q3 results will raise Apple’s stock price tomorrow, which already has happened today in after-hours trading as the stock has gone up $4.12 to $58.22.
This is great for Apple, especially in contrast to the market anxiety just before Apple published the earnings figures. But can Apple sustain the growth? Although Vista is much delayed, it probably will drive up the demand for PCs during the next 12 months.
On the other hand, many hard-core PC users I know have started talking about Macs like never before - in fact they seem to know more about the Intel-based Macs than I do.