Apple announces record profits

Apple has announced a record profit for its third quarter results, with the success of the iPhone, iPod and a massive growth in Mac sales responsible.

The Cupertino company posted a net quarterly profit of just over $1 billion – a 38 per cent rise on last year's profit of $818 million.

International profit played a hug part in the success with 42% of revenue coming from foreign (ie non-US) markets.

Mac sales

The biggest winner for Apple aside from the impressive iPhone was Macintosh computers – with the company declaring that 2,496,000 Macs were shipped in the quarter – a 41 per cent increase year on year.

Over 11 million iPods were sold and 717,000 iPhones – compared to 270,000 in the equivalent quarter last year.

"We're proud to report the best June quarter for both revenue and earnings in Apple's history," said Steve Jobs, Apple's CEO.

Billions of dollars

"We're extremely pleased with the growth of our business and the generation of almost $5.4 billion in cash in the first three quarters of fiscal 2008," added Peter Oppenheimer, Apple's CFO.

"Looking ahead to the fourth quarter of fiscal 2008, we expect revenue of about $7.8 billion and earnings per diluted share of about $1.00."

Indeed the stand-out success of the new iPhone 3G will be another boon to Apple, which has already declared a million sales in the opening three days after its July 11 release.