Apple sold 6.9 million iPhones in quarter: Apple declined to forecast holiday sales, but focused on margins

CEO Steve Jobs joined Tuesday’s conference call to assure investors that Apple Inc. will maintain its gross profit margins despite the economic downturn.
If Apple’s customer base is under financial strain, consumers are likely to postpone an Apple purchase, rather than seek a cheaper brand, Jobs told analysts.
The company has $25 billion in cash in the bank and zero debt, executives told analysts on the call – a fact that gives the company “tremendous stability,” Jobs said.
And the CEO delivered news of “a spectacular performance” by the iPhone 3G, which sold 6.9 million units worldwide. Apple executives declined to give a breakdown between sales in the United States and internationally, but said international sales were significant.
Apple’s stock had traded down more than 7% by the market’s close, but in after-hours trading it shot up more than 11%. The conference call came after the market closed.
Apple executives on the call also declined to provide product-specific guidance for the holiday quarter, so those seeking forecasts for iPhone sales were disappointed.
“We’re not economists,” Jobs said. “Your next-door neighbor can probably predict what’s going to happen as well as us.”
He said that October typically is a “foggy month” for the company as it attempted to forecast the holiday season in order to make “prudent” factory orders. Holiday sales don’t “take off” until November, he said.
But financial results for the quarter that ended Sept. 27 – Apple’s fourth fiscal quarter – were encouraging, the company said.
The company earned revenue of $7.9 billion and net profit of $1.14 billion, up from $6.2 billion and $904 million, respectively, in the year-ago quarter. Apple’s gross margin reached 34.7%, up from 33.6% in the year-ago quarter.
As iPhone ramped in more than 50 countries – up from 6 the prior quarter – it moved more than six times the number sold in the year-ago quarter.
“We sold more phones than RIM,” Jobs said.
Asked by an analyst whether Apple’s strategy of having essentially one SKU (stock-keeping unit) in an industry that’s 10 times the size of the PC market concerned Jobs.
“Well, I wasn’t alive back then,” Jobs said. “But Babe Ruth had just one homerun, and just hit it over and over again.”
“As software becomes dominant (in mobile phones), a hundred variations (of devices) presented to an application developer isn’t very enticing,” Jobs said. “We’re extremely comfortable with our software platform strategy and (the iPhone) is a software platform.”
Apple also shipped 2.6 million Macintosh computers during the quarter, representing 21% unit growth and 17% revenue growth over the year-ago quarter. The company sold 11 million iPods during the quarter, representing 8% unit growth and 3% revenue growth.