Yesterday, Apple released the results for its 2011 fiscal fourth quarter (which ran from June 26, 2011 to September 24, 2011) and held a call with analysts to discuss the results. It was a record-setting quarter for Apple, with sales of $28.27 billion and net profit of $6.62 billion. It was also a record-setting fiscal year, with $108 billion in revenue and $26 billion in profit. If you want to hear the full call yourself, you can download it from iTunes. Apple’s official press release is here. Here are the highlights of the call that I think would be of interest to attorneys who use an iPhone or iPad:
- Apple sold 17.07 million iPhones this past quarter, almost $11 billion in revenue. Apple’s CEO Tim Cook admitted that this number could have been higher but many people were waiting for Apple to announce the 2011 version of the iPhone, influenced by the numerous rumors. In past years, the new iPhone was released in June or July, so during the entire length of this fiscal quarter, tons of people were holding off on iPhone purchases, just waiting for a new announcement.
- Apple sold 11.2 million iPads, more than ever before, resulting in $6.9 billion in sales. If you combine iPhone, iPad and iPod touch sales, that means that Apple has to date has sold over 250 million iOS devices.
- There are more than 500,000 apps on the App Store right now. Over 18 billion apps have been downloaded to date.
- iPhones and iPads are extremely popular in businesses, such as law firms. (OK, I added that last part about law firms, but I know it is true.) Apple said that 93% of the Fortune 400 are using or trying the iPhone, and 92% are using or trying the iPad.
- The big news of the moment is the new iPhone 4S. Apple sold over 4 million of them in the first weekend that they went on sale. (When the iPhone 4 went on sale in 2010, less than 2 million were sold the first weekend.)
- Apple is especially pleased to see the great response to Siri. I myself think that with Siri, we are on the edge of something exciting, and I can’t even imagine how much more advanced the artificial intelligence and speech recognition technology will be in a few years. Over the last few days as I have been using my new iPhone 4S, I have frequently found myself thinking that Siri really changes everything.
- Tim Cook stated that he expects Apple to sell more iPhones and more iPads during the current December fiscal quarter than ever before in Apple history. With the new iPhone 4S, the much-loved iPad 2, and the holiday buying season, I suspect that Tim Cook is quite safe in making that prediction. But Cook’s vision stretches far beyond this quarter and he predicted that tablet computers will ultimately be more popular than PCs.