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Rory Cellan-Jones
Technology correspondent
iCash: Apple's money making machine
iPad sales are up 183%
On examining Apple's latest quarterly results its rivals may turn to the poet Shelley: "Look on my works ye Mighty and despair!"
The company is turning into one of the most extraordinary cash-generating machines ever built, and just keeps on growing.
Revenues rose to $28.6bn in the quarter, up from $15.7bn last year, while profits soared to $7.3bn, more than twice as much as in the same quarter in 2010.
Just to put that in perspective for UK readers, Apple made more profit in one quarter than the immensely successful retailer Tesco did in the whole of last year.
Even scarier, Apple's spare cash soared by more than $10bn in the quarter to $76.2bn.
And what's piling up this mountain of money at Apple's Cupertino headquarters? What the company described as dramatic growth in iPhone and iPad sales, up 142% and 183% respectively.
Together they earned revenues of nearly $20bn in the quarter - so two thirds of the computer company's revenues are now coming from mobile devices which did not exist four years ago.
The statistics are dizzying - but sometimes one picture - or rather a graphic - is worth a thousand numbers. Look at this chart compiled by the Macworld site, showing the growth of revenues by product line:
It illustrates just how rapidly first the iPhone and now the iPad have turned Apple from a pretty successful computer and MP3 player business into a mobile megalith now apparently dominant in the communications industry of the future.
Scary stuff then for rivals. But they may turn again to Shelley for comfort. The poem Ozymandias from which that line in my opening paragraph comes is in fact a tale of the inevitable decline of an empire. It ends:
"Round the decay, of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare, the lone and level sands stretch far away."
In technology, mighty empires grow and then crumble at an ever more rapid rate. But there are no signs yet of any decay setting in at Apple.
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Comment number 40.
Clive Sinclair27th July 2011 - 17:54
If people didn't like Apple they would't be so successful. One they do offer that no one else does? Dedicated stores with superb customer service, with support staff who know a lot more than your average Currys or PC World salesman/tech support.
Good products and good customer support. Expensive or not, a recipe for success.
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Comment number 39.
ChipChopChippy22nd July 2011 - 18:54
The genius of Apple is their ability to take the ideas of others and pass them off as their own - most often via their mouthpiece i.e. the BBC. The list is endless: the GUI; OSX; Safari Web Browser; Touch Screens; 64-bit Computing; Video Calling; all built using the ideas of others most commonly with OpenSource code (with a BSD license wherever possible so they can avoid giving code back) Genius!
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Comment number 38.
_mdwh_22nd July 2011 - 13:36
So in the last few days, we've now had stories of Intel making record revenue, as well as Microsoft. Many tech companies have reported excellent results; there was a BBC story speculating about a new tech boom. Turns out the commenters here were right - there's nothing special about Apple.
So where's the praise from the BBC for these companies too?
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Comment number 37.
RedLeader122nd July 2011 - 10:17
@36 Graphis
"Everyone I know with a PC has had to replace it every 2-3 years. You get what you pay for."
Such broad sweeping comments like that are just not credible.I know people whose PC's are going strong after 2-3 years. I too have got what I paid for with a PC I purchased 5 years ago and it is still going strong. Most people have no need for a PC as old as 10 years. Macs also do breakdown.
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Comment number 36.
Graphis22nd July 2011 - 8:57
Apple's products are indeed expensive, but that's the price of quality. My 10 year old G4 desktop is still going strong, although relegated to less intensive tasks these days. How many other manufacturers products are still working after 10 years? Everyone I know with a PC has had to replace it every 2-3 years. You get what you pay for.
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Comments 5 of 40