Apple financials leave rivals green with envy

Even with only two days of iPhone sales included, Cupertino smashes records

Apple has posted huge increases in revenue and profit as Mac sales as well as iPods climbed, even before most of the skyrocketing sales of the iPhone are factored in.

For its fiscal third quarter to the end of June, Apple broke its record for revenue, profit and Mac sales. It turned over $5.4bn and had a net surplus of $818m, compared to comparative figures of $4.4bn and $472m respectively this time last year. Margins also shot up from 30.3 percent to 36.9 percent.

Perhaps most impressive was that Apple sold over 1.7 million Macs in the period.

“The first leg that Apple stands on is its Mac PCs,” wrote Ovum analyst Carl Gressum in a research note. “What makes the Mac PC growth even more impressive is that Windows Vista does not seem to have slowed down Apple’s PC growth. Cementing Apple’s strong play in the PC market is that the main Windows PC vendors are starting to consider Apple as their main long-term competitor.”

The next quarter could be even more impressive with Steve Jobs predicting that over a million iPhones will have been shifted. The iPhone only shipped on 29 June so its impact on the quarter just reported was minimal despite Apple having sold 270,000 units in two days.