Dan Warne23 October 2008, 11:47 AM
The world may be in financial crisis, but Apple's sales are soaring, said CEO Steve Jobs, who also revealed Apple is now the world's third largest mobile phone maker.
Unexpectedly high sales of the iPhone 3G pushed the company's overall sales up 48% over reported sales figures of $7.9bn to $11.68bn for the last three months.
"If this isn't stunning, I don't know what is. All due to the incredible success of the iPhone 3G," said Jobs, making a surprise appearance on a stockmarket analyst conference call.
Apple has also managed to outsell Blackberry in the US — no mean feat considering Blackberry has the largest market share of all smartphones in the United States. Jobs announced that in the last 15 months, Apple had outsold Blackberry maker RIM in all quarters.
This made Apple the third largest mobile phone company in the world, by revenue, Jobs said. "I know this sounds crazy, but it's true. As measured in revenues, not units, Apple has become the third largest mobile phone supplier."
Nokia (with sales of $12.7 billion) and Samsung ($5.9 billion) are still ahead of Apple with its $4.6 billion sales revenue. The runners up are Sony Ericsson with $4.2 billion, LG with $3.4 billion, Motorola with $3.2 billion and RIM with $2.1 billion.
Will Apple do a netbook?
Steve Jobs also addressed the issue of whether Apple would produce a netbook to compete with the tiny Eee PC and plethora of similar machines that have appeared in the past year.
Jobs said no. "As best as we can tell, there's not a lot of them being sold. You know, one of our entrants into that category, if you will, is the iPhone, for browsing the Internet, and doing email and all the other things that a netbook lets you do. And being connected via the cellular network wherever you are, an iPhone is a pretty good solution for that, and it fits in your pocket.
But he also said Apple had ideas up its sleeve if the category took off and there was real customer demand for an Apple netbook. "We'll wait and see how that nascent category evolves, and we have got some pretty interesting ideas if it does evolve."
Apple shares dive — making them attractive to buy
Despite the record sales figures, Apple shares have dived 45% from where they were at the beginning of the year, due to ongoing financial market uncertainty, and investor doubt that consumer sales will hold up as financial stress kicks in at an individual level.
However, Apple now has $25.4 billion in cash sitting in the bank, with no company debt, making Apple resilient to the financial crisis, Jobs said. The fundamentally strong position of the company means it's probably a good time to buy Apple shares now at a discount price, since they'll almost certainly rise from their current position.