Apple Q3 profit up 47 percent

Apple yesterday reported a fiscal third-quarter profit that rose 47.5 percent from the same quarter last year on increased iPod and Macintosh sales.
Apple experienced the second highest quarterly earnings and revenue in Apple's history in the third quarter with US$4.37 billion in revenue and 24 percent year over year growth. Apple enjoyed the best Mac unit sales in any 13 week quarter in company history. Net income was US$472 million or 54 cents per diluted share.
The results were well ahead of Thomson First Call projections of 44 cents a share. In Q3 2005, by comparison, Apple earned US$320 million in net income on revenue of US$3.52 billion.
Macintosh sales were 55 percent of quarterly revenue (a 12 percent increase over last year) with 1.327 million units shipped. Music products represented 45 percent of total company revenue in Q3 with 8.11 million iPods shipped - up 32 percent year over year.
iPod sales slowed slightly. In the Q2 2006 Apple sold 8.5 million iPods, this quarter the company sold 8.1 million units — only a 4.7 percent decline less than some predicted.
Apple CFO Peter Oppenheimer reported that their PowerMac and Xserve computers would be migrated to Intel processors by the end of the year and that 75 percent of Macs shipped with Intel processors.
When asked what the company thought of Sony's success with the Walkman Phone Oppenheimer responded:

"Well, we are very confident in our ability to compete in the marketplace... and we're very excited about what we have in the product pipeline, and you know that I can't comment on that. As regards cell phones, we don't think that the phones that are available today make the best music players. We think the iPod is. But over time, that is likely to change. And we're not sitting around doing nothing."

Hmmm...