Despite a successful third quarter in which Apple reported revenue of US$7.46bn – up 38pc on last year’s results – stock value at one point dropped by just over 10pc after trading due to conservative estimations of US$7.8bn in revenues, which fell short of some Wall Street analysts’ estimations of US$8.3bn.
Following last week’s results from internet giant Google, which induced disappointment among analysts and appeared to be confirmation that the US economy is on a definite downturn, the conservative Q4 estimations from the Apple camp, the technology world’s golden child, would also seem to substantiate this decline among some industry analysts.
While Apple’s product shipment was generally growing, with 2.5 million Macs shipped in this past quarter marking a 41pc revenue growth in the desktop market, Apple executives intimated that its products prices may rise going forward in yesterday’s conference call about the quarterly results.
Still, the iPod and iPhone market showed no signs of slowing with over 11 million iPods sold during the quarter, while 717,00 iPhone units were shifted in this period.
This might seem like a small number but compare this to 270,000 units sold in the previous quarter and add to this the fact that Apple has only just begun to sell its iPhone 3G in new markets worldwide. The touchscreen handset is gaining ground and the next-generation version sold over one million units in the first weekend of its release.
The quarterly results also saw Apple CEO, Steve Jobs, announcing that several brand new Apple products were in the pipeline: “We’re busy finishing several more wonderful new products to launch in the coming months.”
This was compounded with the statement by Apple’s COO, Timothy Cook, that the company had something pretty new and pretty exciting in the offing: “Apple makes state-of-the-art products that our competitors can’t match. We have some investments ahead of us that I can’t discuss with you today.”
By Marie Boran
Pictured: Apple store, West 14th, New York City
