Apple's Numbers for the Quarter – Another One Hit Out of the Park

Apple exceeds Wall Street's expectations. Again. What does this mean for you, regular ol Mac dude, and what interesting things came out of the report?

This getting to be an old story. Apple sets expectations low and then just blows right by them by a margin of 25-45%. Amusingly, the first question from an analyst in the conference call was, "Why should we believe your estimates?" Nice!

So here's the low down: Mac sales have grown faster than the rest of the computer industry for 11 straight quarters. Apple sold more Macs in this past quarter than ever before. Laptops are going crazy, desktops are slightly up, iPods are doing stable growth and iPhones are still unknown because they barely counted in this last quarter. They did note that 270,000 were sold in the first day and a half.

So what's this mean for you? First of all, sales are going crazy, so there's no remorse for holding back Leopard or any of the other perceived delays in products. I doubt there is much second guessing going on in Cupertino right about now. So basically, the whining of Mac folks like me about "where is my iLife?" and the bomb-throwing pundits like Dvorak will continue to be ignored by Apple. Big surprise.

Most importantly, one reason they noted conservative expectations for the next quarter was for "product transitions that I can't get into." What can that mean? Well, I wouldn't expect the iMac evolving (which is expected) to impact the bottom line much. Or any of the other Mac lines. What I do expect is that the iPod will get a major makeover before the Christmas buying season. Perhaps the iPhone touchscreen and user interface. That would be a big enough change to cost the company. A whole other product like a tablet would too, but I wouldn't expect that because this is really the year of the iPhone.

What "product transition" do you think would cause them concern? Let us know in the Comments section below!

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