Apple Nukes the Street – Again!

Apple tossed all the analyst’s predictions into a big microwave oven and set it to high as they announced their latest quarterly financial results. Apple announced their results on Tuesday and posted record non-holiday quarter sales of $13.5 billion for the period ending March 27, 2010.

Their quarterly profits rose 90% to $3.07 billion. These results are completely astounding when you compare them to the same period a year ago. In 2009, sales were $9.08 billion (that’s nearly a 50% increase in sales) and profit was $1.62 billion in 2009 (that’s a 90% increase in profit!).

Steve Jobs said in the announcement, “We’re thrilled to report our best non-holiday quarter ever, with revenues up 49 percent and profits up 90 percent. We’ve launched our revolutionary new iPad and users are loving it, and we have several more extraordinary products in the pipeline for this year.”

Here are some highlights from Apple’s financial results:

• Apple sold 8.75 million iPhones, 2.94 million Macs and 10.89 million iPods.
• Earnings per share was $3.33 versus the analyst’s estimates of $2.45.
• iPhone sales were off the chart as revenue was $5.6 billion up from $2.4 billion from a year ago.
• iPad was not included in this quarter’s numbers since it did not ship until April 1.
• Apple maintains a 70% market-share of MP3 players and continues to gain share internationally.
• iTunes store had $1.1 billion in sales—best quarter ever for the Music/App/Book Store.
• There were over 4 billion downloads from the App Store!
• Apple has $41.7 billion in cash (and the acquisition rumors are flying).

Apple not only makes the most exciting and innovative products on the planet, but also has one of the most effective management teams in place to manage this astronomical growth. While many times, Steve Jobs gets the credit for Apple’s success, I know that even a visionary leader like Steve needs the management team to make it work.

Tim Cook, John Brandon, Peter Oppenheimer and others on the team must also have visionary leadership to coordinate development, production, distribution and promotion. Just think of all the pieces that went into the very successful iPad launch. Even though every company feels their new product will be a smashing success, you never truly know until the orders roll in. Will 200,000 units be enough or 2,000,000?

Apple met its goals with the launch and the reviews are very positive with virtually no reports of technical difficulties. The point is that creating new products that are awesome is only 1/2 the battle, the behind the scenes work is also vital to Apple’s success and Apple has world-class management in place to lead the company from its current $50 billion size to the next level.

Congratulations to Apple for an outstanding quarter—we look forward to the extraordinary products… er… toys… that are in the pipeline!