Stephen Withers
Tuesday, 22 July 2008 10:35
Opinion and Analysis
Page 1 of 3
The rise of Apple's Macintosh family and Mac OS X shows no sign of waning as Apple sets an impressive new quarterly record for the three months ending June 2008 with almost 2.5 million Macs shipped. The good news didn't just come from the Mac business: iPod and iPhone sales weren't too shabby either.
Unit shipments soared on a prior year basis for all three product lines.
2,496,000 Macs gave Apple 41 percent unit growth and 43 percent revenue growth compared with the corresponding period in 2007. What we don't know is how many of these computers went to first-time purchasers, Windows switchers and existing Mac owners. But it probably means Microsoft missed out on the best part of 2.5 million Vista licences, given the extent to which Linux still lags in the desktop and notebook markets.
What about iPods? Some people thought the iPhone would cannibalise iPod sales - after all, it has been getting all the media attention - and they could be right.
A healthy 11,011,000 iPod units were shipped, but that's 'only' up 12 percent on volume and seven percent on revenue. So whereas people are on average paying a little more for their Macs, the typical iPod purchase is slightly cheaper than it was a year ago.
iPhones appear going gangbusters, with an impressive sounding 165 percent unit year-on-year growth to 717,000 handsets. More significantly - but not surprisingly as the debut of the iPhone 3G was on the cards - sales of the original model fell from 1.7 million in the previous quarter. Since only the first few days sales of the original model fell into the year-ago quarter, it's hard to read anything into the comparison.
The iPhone 3G didn't ship until after the quarter had closed.
So how much did Apple actually make? Find out on
page 2.
