Apple more than doubles its net income

Seems like there's no boundary for Apple's growth, the company announced its fiscal first quarter results yesterday and they are pretty impressive. The company pulled in a record quarterly revenue of $46.33 billion and a record quarterly profit of $13.06 billion. Revenue is up significantly from $26.74 billion in the same quarter the year before, while net profit has more than doubled from $6 billion!

The company's iPhone, iPad and Mac lines have all achieved record sales, only the iPod has fallen out of grace. Last quarter Apple sold 37.04 million iPhones, 15.34 million iPads, 5.2 million Mac computers and 15.4 million iPods, compared to 16.24 million, 7.3 million, 4.13 million and 19.45 million, respectively, in the year before period.

Interestingly, as FUD Zilla points out today, Apple has managed to sell more iPads in Q4 2011 than HP sold PCs!

For the first time ever, Apple has surpassed HP in both computer unit sales and revenue, making it the largest computer manufacturer in the world. In its quarter ended December 31, 2011, the company managed to sell 15.4 million iPads while HP sold 14.7 million PCs. The closest competitors, Lenovo and Dell, sold 12.9 million and 11.6 million units respectively.

For the present quarter, Apple anticipates a revenue of around $32.5 billion, which would be a big jump over last year's $24.67 billion.

Here's Apple's full PR:

Apple® today announced financial results for its fiscal 2012 first quarter which spanned 14 weeks and ended December 31, 2011. The Company posted record quarterly revenue of $46.33 billion and record quarterly net profit of $13.06 billion, or $13.87 per diluted share. These results compare to revenue of $26.74 billion and net quarterly profit of $6 billion, or $6.43 per diluted share, in the year-ago quarter. Gross margin was 44.7 percent compared to 38.5 percent in the year-ago quarter. International sales accounted for 58 percent of the quarter’s revenue.

The Company sold 37.04 million iPhones in the quarter, representing 128 percent unit growth over the year-ago quarter. Apple sold 15.43 million iPads during the quarter, a 111 percent unit increase over the year-ago quarter. The Company sold 5.2 million Macs during the quarter, a 26 percent unit increase over the year-ago quarter. Apple sold 15.4 million iPods, a 21 percent unit decline from the year-ago quarter.

“We’re thrilled with our outstanding results and record-breaking sales of iPhones, iPads and Macs,” said Tim Cook, Apple’s CEO. “Apple’s momentum is incredibly strong, and we have some amazing new products in the pipeline.”

“We are very happy to have generated over $17.5 billion in cash flow from operations during the December quarter,” said Peter Oppenheimer, Apple’s CFO. “Looking ahead to the second fiscal quarter of 2012, which will span 13 weeks, we expect revenue of about $32.5 billion and we expect diluted earnings per share of about $8.50.”