Mountain Lion is coming out tomorrow, July 25. That seems to be some of the biggest news to come out of Apple's third quarter earnings release on Tuesday, because Apple otherwise had a pretty average (for Apple) quarter. Unit sales of iPads, iPhones, and Macs were all up year-over-year, though not quite at fall-out-of-the-chair levels. Meanwhile, CEO Tim Cook continued to tease listeners about future products in the pipeline, while simultaneously addressing the rumors and speculation about the as-yet-unannounced new iPhone expected for the fall.
First thing's first: the results. Apple posted a quarterly revenue of $35 billion with a quarterly net profit of $8.8 billion during the third quarter, up from $28.6 billion and $7.3 billion in the year-ago quarter, respectively. Mac sales were up two percent with 4 million sold, iPhone sales were up 28 percent at 26 million sold, and iPad sales were up 84 percent at 17 million sold. As usual, iPods saw a unit decline during the third fiscal quarter—they were down 10 percent year over year at 6.8 million sold. However, Apple insisted once again during its earnings call that iPod sales were better than expected and that iPod touch sales made up more than half of that number.
Apple didn't formally announce numbers when it came to the Apple TV, but Cook did answer a question about them during the call, highlighting once again that the device remains a "hobby" status at Apple. The company sold 1.3 million Apple TVs during the third quarter—up "over" 170 percent year over year—bringing fiscal 2012 sales to 4 million. "It's still at a level that we would call it a hobby, but we continue to pull strings to see where it takes us. We're not one to keep around projects that we don't believe in," Cook said. "The 4 million is not a small number. It's small relative to iPads and iPhones perhaps, but it's not a small number."
Unlike the last quarterly call, Cook did not make significantly divisive remarks regarding the company's patent fights. Last quarter, Cook famously stated, "I've always hated litigation and I continue to hate it. We just want people to invent their own stuff." This time around, analysts avoided legal questions, though Cook did indirectly address the competition while discussing the company's iPad strategy.
"Most customers feel that they're not looking for a tablet," Cook said in response to a question about iPad pricing, "they're just looking for an iPad." He later pointed out that the $399 iPad 2 did particularly well in some markets, such as K-12 education, but that customers generally prefer the third-generation iPad and don't seem to care much about non-iPad options.
"In terms of competition, we've all seen many different tablets. Hundreds of them came to market over the last year," Cook said. "I have yet to see any of them gain any level of attraction at all."
And for what seems like the first time, Cook also spent more than a sentence addressing the rumors and speculation about Apple's new products—largely because the company believes customers have been holding back on iPhone purchases after reading such rumors. "We try very hard to keep our product roadmap secret and confidential, and we go to extreme activities to do that. That, however, doesn't stop people from speculating or wondering," he said. "That's the great thing about this country; people can say what they think. I'm not going to spend any energy trying to change that. I'm glad people want the next thing. I'm super happy about it."
Unsurprisingly, Apple did not specifically talk about any future products and carefully avoided referring to anything that might be coming down the pipeline. The company did, however, acknowledge that Mountain Lion would be available to customers via the Mac App Store sometime on Wednesday morning. As usual, OS X aficionados can prepare themselves to read John Siracusa's review of OS X 10.8 right here on Ars when Mountain Lion is released in the morning. Stay tuned for some epic review goodness!
Listing image by Emily Rachel Hildebrand
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