Mac sales up 51%

Things aren't looking good for the Microsoft's Vista fortunes -- Apple's latest financial results show Mac shipments are up by 51% -- growth which must partly be attributable to consumer dissatisfaction with Microsoft operating systems.

Apple's financials included a 36 percent jump in net profit, beating analyst expectations of earnings per share of $1.06 with actual results of $1.16 per share. (In the same period last year, Apple earned 87 cents per share.)

Mac sales saw the most rapid growth up from 1,517,000 to 2,289,000 -- representing 51 percent unit growth and 54 percent revenue growth over the year-ago quarter. iPhone sales continued to be strong, with Apple shipping 1,703,000 more in the January to March quarter (but less than the 2.5million Apple would need to ship to hit its target of 10,000,000 iPhones in 2008. In the conference call after the earnings announcement, Tim Cook, COO of Apple remained confident that Apple would meet this target. He also said that developer response to the iPhone SDK was 'tremendous' with over 200,000 downloads of the SDK. Interest in the iPhone is also strong at the enterprise and education levels.

iPod sales are losing their phenomenal growth trajectory, but nonetheless remained steady with sequential growth of 1 percent, while revenue grew 8 percent, largely due to the higher average selling price (probably due to the iPod Touch). Cook also reiterated that iTunes sales were very strong (music related services accounted for 36 percent of Apple's revenue) and noted that Apple was the largest music retailer in the US, surpassing Wal-Mart. He didn't, however, give any detail on the success (or lack thereof) of Apple TV take 2.0, except to say that the product had been well received by customers, and TV shows just became available on the German iTunes store. A global roll-out is still expected for later this year.

However... is Apple really doing that well? Read Angus Kidman's take on these same results.