Yesterday, Apple released the results for its 2012 fiscal third quarter (which ran from April 1, 2012 to June 30, 2012) and held a call with analysts to discuss the results. This is typically not a big fiscal quarter for Apple; the important quarter for Apple every year is the first fiscal quarter containing the holiday sales season. Nevertheless, it was yet another profitable quarter for Apple, with Apple announcing quarterly revenue of $35 billion and quarterly net profit of $8.8 billion. If you want to get all of the nitty gritty details, you can download the audio from the announcement conference call from iTunes, or you can read a rough transcript of the call prepared by Seeking Alpha. Apple's official press release is here. There were only a few things said on the call yesterday that I think would be of interest to iPhone and iPad users:
- Apple sold a record 17 million iPads last quarter, the most that Apple has ever sold in any quarter. It appears that a lot of people were eager to get their hands on the new third-generation iPad, but Apple is also selling a ton of the iPad 2 models now that Apple has discounted them to $399 — especially to K through 12 schools. If my math is correct, as of June 30, 2012, Apple has sold just over 84 million iPads.
- Apple sold 26 million iPhones last quarter. That number is smaller than the 37 million iPhones sold two quarters earlier when the iPhone 4S came out and the 35.1 million iPhones sold last quarter, but it is still the third best quarter in Apple history for iPhone sales. By my count, that means that as of June 30, 2012, Apple has sold over 240 million iPhones.
- Large companies love the iPhone, and Apple CFO Peter Oppenheimer said that the number of iPhones in the Fortune 500 has more than doubled in the past year.
- Large companies really love the iPad, and Oppenheimer said that the number of iPads in the Fortune 500 has more than tripled in the past year.
- Both Oppenheimer and Apple CEO Tim Cook stated that rumors and speculation of an upcoming new iPhone are causing some people to hold off on buying one. Cook noted: "We try very hard to keep our product roadmap secret and confidential, and we go to extreme, do extreme activities to try to do that. That, however, doesn’t stop people from speculating or wondering. And we’ll never do that. And so it’s a great thing about this country, people can say what they think and so forth. And so I'm not going to spend any energy trying to change that, that’s just the environment we are in. You know, I’m glad that people want the next thing. I’m super happy about it. And there are obviously quite a few that want what we’re currently doing as well, as witnessed by the amount of products that we’re selling. And so, I’m not going to put any energy into trying to get people to stop speculating. I don’t think it would – I don’t think that’s going to amount anything."
- These comments about iPhone speculation might have been an attempt to get analysts to understand why iPhone demand may decrease over the next few months until the 2012 version of the iPhone comes out. And because Apple did not predict that it will have a huge 2012 fiscal fourth quarter (July-Sept.) this could be interpreted as suggesting that we will not see the next model of the iPhone before October of 2012. That would be consistent with last year, when the iPhone 4S went on sale on October 14, 2011. Thus, if you are thinking of getting a new iPhone but you feel that you can wait until October, the statements made on yesterday's call cause me to think that October is probably a safe target date for you to keep in mind for the 2012 model of the iPhone.