APPLE POST 67% EARNINGS GAIN FOR QUARTER

From The New York Times:

Apple reported earnings on Monday that leapt ahead of analysts’ already optimistic expectations on record sales of its Macintosh computers.

The numbers showed that the company was slowly climbing back into the league of the dominant personal computer makers, Hewlett-Packard and Dell.

Apple reported fourth-quarter profit of $904 million, or $1.01 a share, up from $542 million, or 62 cents, in the quarter a year ago, an increase of 67 percent. Analysts had predicted profit of 85 cents a share.

Sales rose to $6.22 billion, from $4.84 billion. Gross margin also surged, to 33.6 percent, from 29.2 percent a year ago.

Apple said it sold 2.16 million Macintosh computers worldwide in the quarter, an increase of 400,000 over the previous record. It does not break out domestic and foreign sales.

The market research firm Dataquest estimated last week that Apple sold 1.3 million computers in the United States, and IDC put the figure at 1.1 million. In the same period, Dell sold 5 million computers and H.P. sold 4.3 million in the United States, according to the IDC report.