Apple posts the biggest quarterly
profit in history 28 January 2015 From the section Business comments US technology giant Apple has
reported the biggest quarterly
profit ever made by a public
company. Apple reported a net profit of $18bn (£11.8bn) in its fiscal first quarter,
which tops the $15.9bn made by
ExxonMobil in the second quarter of
2012, according to Standard and
Poor's. Record sales of iPhones were behind
the surge in profits. Apple sold 74.5 million iPhones in the
three months to 27 December - well
ahead of most analysts' expectations. In a conference call with financial
analysts Apple's chief executive Tim
Cook said that demand for phones
was "staggering". However, sales of the iPad continued
to disappoint, falling by 22% in 2014
from a year earlier. Apple quarterly results $18bn profit (£11.8bn) - biggest ever by a public
company $142bn (£93bn) net cash reserves 74.5m number of iPhones sold 39.9% profit per product 22% fall in sales of iPads Apple (Figures for three months to
end December 2014) Getty The demand for Apple's larger iPhone
6 Plus model appeared to help boost
profits and increase the iPhone's gross
profit margin - or how much Apple
makes per product - by 2% to 39.9%. However, Apple did not give a
breakdown of sales for the iPhone 6
and other models. Apple shares rose more than 5% in trading after the US markets had
closed. Buster Hein, who edits the "Cult of
Mac" website, told the BBC that iPhone
sales had surpassed expectations. "Oh my gosh, it's unbelievable," he
said. "I mean, a lot of us were
expecting good iPhone sales during
the holidays, but I don't think
anybody really thought Apple was
going to blow past 70 million units sold," he said. "Apple became the number one
smartphone company in China in the
last quarter, which was just huge for
them," he added. Analysis: Richard Taylor, BBC North
America Technology Correspondent Apple's impressive results represent a
significant shift towards the massive
untapped potential of China. With a strong line-up of devices
entering the final quarter, it was able
to reap the fruits of its deal with the
world's biggest mobile network, China
Mobile. However, the success of its latest big-
screen iPhones may have contributed
to further cannibalising sales of the
iPad. The once unstoppable tablet is being
further squeezed both by a
resurgence in laptop sales, as well as
by competition - both in an
increasingly saturated US market and
in emerging markets by lower-priced, rival machines. All eyes now are on the Apple Watch -
but with a relatively high base price it
is not clear whether it will be able to
woo more than the Apple faithful. The Apple Watch is due for release in
April BBC technology correspondent Rory
Cellan-Jones said the iPhone had
"transformed the mobile phone
industry". "Others have a bigger share of the
market - Samsung, for instance,
actually sells more phones than Apple
- but Apple makes just an
extraordinary amount of money from
this one phone. "A lot of this, at the moment, is about
China, where this brand has got
extraordinary cachet. They [Apple]
sold more phones in China in the last
quarter than they have in the United
States." He added that one possible shadow
on Apple's future was the question of
whether the firm could repeat the
success of the iPhone. "The next one [product] that's
supposed to be coming along is the
Apple Watch in April," he said. "I've
got some doubts as to whether that
will be the mass market success,
beyond the geek population, that the iPhone has been." Currency woes Apple's revenue grew to $74.6bn in
2014 - a 30% increase from a year
earlier. However, on a conference call to
discuss earnings, Mr Cook complained
of "fierce foreign exchange volatility",
which added Apple to a growing list of
US firms who have been hurt by the strong dollar abroad. Apple said that currency fluctuations
shaved 4% from its first-quarter
revenue. Sales in greater China hit $16bn in
2014 - a 70% increase from a year
earlier, and almost equalling the $
17bn in sales the company recorded
in Europe last year. A report by research firm Canalys
released on Tuesday said that Apple
had overtaken competitors to become
China's number one seller of
smartphones by units shipped in the
fourth quarter of 2014. Apple also said that its newest
product, the Apple Watch, was still on
schedule and would begin shipping in
April.
www.bbc.com

hmmmm....With their ova priced devices