Apple Reports Fourth Quarter Results
So, this week Apple posted exceptional results for Q3 or 2009 (their fiscal fourth quarter), showing adjusted revenues of $9.87 billion dollars representing $12.25 billion in actual sales in the period. (The company has to adjust sales for the iPhone and Apple TV over their estimated economic lives to meet GAAP accounting rules.)
Both Mac computers and iPhones saw unit growth over the year-ago quarter, while the iPod fell slightly. The company sold more Macs and iPhones than it ever has in a single quarter, suggesting amazing staying power across its product lines.
For the full year, Apple posted revenue growth of 12 percent and net income grew 18 percent, suggesting that being in the business of selling Macs and iPhones is simply a nice place to be.
Apple gave guidance pointing toward $12 billion in revenues for their Q1 2010 (Q4 2009), suggesting they plan to sell some stuff for the holiday season. Probably a safe bet.
Apple Reports Fourth Quarter Results.
Mac Upgrade Company Now Powered by Wind
This is cool…OWC, one of my favorite “go to” companies for Mac-oriented upgrades (they sell memory, hard drives and other components for Macs) just announced that their company is completely off the grid, using wind power for all of their daily power needs. What a great step to take — and how much fun is it that they’re a medium-sized business willing to take on this investment.
OWC Turbine is now online and operational. | Other World Computing Blog.
Apple Posts ‘Best Non-Holiday Quarter Ever’
Don’t tell Apple there’s a recession on. With the launch of the iPhone 3Gs as part of its mix this quarter, the company reporting revenues of $8.34 billion, with a net quarterly profit of $1.43 billion. That’s compared to a year-ago quarter of $7.46b and $1.07b respectively.
(Microsoft in the year-ago quarter did $15.84b and $5.68b. Just FYI.)
Mac sales increased 4 percent over the year-ago quarter with Mac portables up 13 percent of year-over-year.
The 10.2 million iPods sold was a decline of 7 percent, which might give some cause for concern. Fortunately that concern is mitigated somewhat by the fact that iPhones sales increased 626 percent in unit growth over the year-ago quarter. 
You can listen to the audio webcast until early August.
End of an Era: Macworld
Apple announced today that Steve Jobs would not keynote the San Francisco Macworld Expo in January 2009, suggesting (a.) that there isn’t anything cool enough for Jobs to personally go public with and (b.) that Apple feels the tradeshow has runs its course in terms of usefulness to the company. According to the press release, this will be Apple’s last yearon the show floor, as well. The release cites the growth of their Apple Stores as a way for them to reach out to customers.
The increasing popularity of Apple’s Retail Stores, which more than 3.5 million people visit every week, and the Apple.com website enable Apple to directly reach more than a hundred million customers around the world in innovative new ways.
It’s been years since I’ve attended a Macworld Expo myself (I don’t remember how many, but certainly my last show was before I moved to Mississippi in 2001), but I remember them fondly, particularly as I was attending through the lean years, pre-Jobs, when there were few enough of us “Mac authors” still fighting it out with the PC snobs and the Apple dead-enders. I remember the Return of Jobs in Boston in 1997, although I wasn’t there for that one…I believe there was a QuickTime simulcast. I think I WAS there in 1998 for Macworld SF, and I’ve seen Jobs do his live thing a number of times since.
I remember the fight over moving Macworld from Boston to New York (I was there for at least one of those; I remember meeting one of my editors at a great bar on 9th Avenue back when I was living there) and then Apple’s subsequent pulling of the plug on that one, too.
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Netflix Player in Beta for Mac
This is a big deal…Netflix is moving from a DVD-based service to a streaming based service, and the lack of Mac support up until now has been a stumbling block. Now, though, there’s a beta of the Netflix player for Mac!
This could be big — if Netflix can figure out how to charge (and make money at) offering a fixed-rate streaming service that would give you access to high-quality movies and TV shows, it could be a strong competitor in this space. I’m already a huge fan of iTunes downloads, but just think if you could take it a step forward and download from a massive catalog at a monthly rate…if they can pull it off, I might just have to get the Rokr box instead of the Apple TV I’ve had my eye on.
To make it work, you need to visit http://www.netflix.com/silverlightoptin and opt in to the beta program. (This also means you’ll have to use Microsoft Silverlight for watching in Windows, apparently, so if you do often watch in Windows from your Netflix account, you might want to wait a while.)
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