This week, as many corporations did, Apple announced the financial results for their third quarter of fiscal year 2006. In the last few weeks, Apple’s stock price has been taking a beating. Not a day went by without an online “news” story casting doubts on the company’s future. It was eerily reminiscent of the days before Steve Jobs’ return, when the adjective “beleaguered” appeared next to “Apple” in every column and article.

“News” of Microsoft’s coming “iPod killer” portable media player spurred articles announcing the end of the iPod’s dominance in the market. Writers eager to rap Apple’s knuckles reported isolated instances of product “abnormalities” as if they were the norm. Now, for the record, some of the early MacBook laptop computers were scorching hot. And we’re not talking about processor speed. We’re talking about heat generated by the Core Duo processor, especially when the “overseas” manufacturers didn’t remove a piece of plastic tape covering a heat exhaust vent on a few MacBooks (a situation which, of course, has been corrected).

There’s no way around it – Core Duo processors run hot. Not just in Apples, but in other manufacturer’s models as well. In fact, Apple has removed the word “laptop” from their website, instead referring to MacBooks and MacBook Pros as “portable” computers. Oh, well. They’ll be cozy warm in the Maine winter, though.

Anyway, I was getting a bit “bummed” reading some of this tripe. But all was right again after listening to Apple’s financial results conference call. Here’s some numbers highlights.

Net quarterly profit of $472 million on $4.37 billion of revenue. 1,327,000 Macintosh computers sold (12% growth), with as many as 50% sold to users new to the Mac platform. I did the math – that’s almost 6 new Mac users every second of every minute of every day of the quarter. Cool. Interestingly, over 700,000 of the 1.3 million computers sold were laptops. Er, I mean, portable computers.

8,111,000 iPods sold (32% growth) - so much for the iPod losing its appeal. iPod still has 75% market share in U.S. market, despite no real “new” iPods in almost a year. iTunes Music Store has 85% market share of online music sales.

Finally, when asked about the potential effects of cellphones-that-play-music on iPod sales, Apple executives said that Apple is “not sitting around doing nothing”.

Can you say “iPhone” for Christmas?

© 2006 Peter F. Zimowski