in the beginning this week , Apple announce that it had enjoyed its most profitable March quarter ever . For the fiscal second quarter ended March 31 , the company deform a $ 770 million earnings on sale of $ 5.26 billion . Impressive act , certainly — now imagine how giving those pattern would be if Apple introduced new Macs and iPods .
I banter , I josh .
So how ’d Apple pull it off ? The answer get along if you break down the figures even further . The company betray 626,000 desktops last quarter , compared to 614,000 a year in the beginning — a modest 2 percent gain . Ah , but take a facial expression at laptop , where Apple sold 891,000 this year , up79 percentfrom the 498,000 it sell in the March 2006 one-fourth .
The desktop ontogenesis , modest though it may be , can be attributed to the Mac Pro , which was introduced in late summertime last year and has been steady dramatise by pro users ever since . The surge in laptop computer gross sales comes from the MacBook — those March 2006 sales build only include the MacBook Pro models introduce during the January 2006 Macworld Expo . The MacBook did n’t hail along until May , and as our supporter at MacJournals note in the April 27 way out of theindispensable MDJnote , it ’s been a hot item ever since . Take a smell at that quarterly Mac sales chart in our report on the 2d - stern earnings again : since the MacBook was introduced , the only stern where laptop computer shipments did n’t pass the 800,000 mark was that June 2006 quarter — the quarter in which the MacBook was introduced . Clearly , this is a machine that carry on to pull customer , peculiarly after last November ’s upgrade to the Core 2 Duo processor .
I do n’t think these results are die to deter Apple from introducing newfangled hardware — intelligibly , you ca n’t expect this sort of sales growth to continue without refresh up your offerings . But it should put aside any concerns that the hold in OS X 10.5 ’s arrival is going to induce people to put off their Mac hardware purchase . The folks who bought 1.5 million Macs during the first three months of 2007 did so with the expectation that Leopard would be arriving sometime during the spring , and yet , they still fracture out the charge card . certainly , some citizenry will doubtlessly check Mac purchases until after the OS update get in October — but in all likelihood not enough to make a dent in Apple ’s hardware sales .
One other affair about this week ’s earnings declaration that merits some care — during his phone briefing with analysts , chief financial ship’s officer Peter Oppenheimer announced that the company would take subscription - orient accounting insurance policy for both Apple TV and the forthcoming iPhone . ( take heed for yourself through the miracle ofiTunes ! ) That raised some surmisal among the assembled fiscal whizzes that Apple was about to reverse its long - stand patronage for subscription - based subject and take off make moving picture and music uncommitted for rent . No die , Oppenheimer pronounce — this is essentially an accounting move that keeps Apple in compliance with regularisation on tax revenue reporting for hardware that gains new capabilities via software update .
As if to further quash any speculation about subscription services , Apple CEO Steve Jobs spoke to newsperson after the profits briefing and more or less put the kibosh on adding a subscription - base oblation to iTunes when blab out toReuters :
My colleague Chris Breen has already outlined the reasons whyApple should rethink its anti - subscription posture . The only thing I can add to that is another reason why strain and movies should be usable for purchaseandrent via iTunes — it grant users another way to enjoy their digital media .
What ’s more , giving customers a choice is the principle Apple gives for a lot of other changes it ’s made to iTunes . Take the recent move to offerDRM - gratuitous songs from EMI for $ 1.29 per trackalongside 99 - cent versions of those same Song containing digital - rights management engineering . ( The $ 1.29 track are also encode at a higher number rate . ) If you mind to Macworld Podcast # 80 , you ’ll get word audio highlights of the EMI press conference announce that decision . And when someone asks why offer DRM - free tracks alongside the 99 - centime option alternatively of one or the other , a speaker has this to say :
The speaker is Steve Jobs , and he ’s right — having more choices is a near affair . Apple should offer that same pick on subscription serving .
