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Apple's Q2 profit beats expectations, soaring 41%

Apple Computer Inc said on Wednesday its second-quarter profit rose 41 percent, beating Wall Street estimates, as sales of its iPod players continued to soar and Macintosh computer shipments increased by 4 percent.

Cupertino-based Apple said it earned US$410 million, or US$0.47 per share, in the three months that ended April 1. In the same period a year ago, the company earned US$290 million, or US$0.34 a share.

Revenue for the quarter was US$4.36 billion, up 34 percent from US$3.24 billion in the same quarter last fiscal year.

However, it was lower than the projections of analysts surveyed by Thomson Financial, who, on average, expected revenue of US$4.54 billion. Consensus earnings forecast was US$0.43 per share.

Still, analysts are expecting Apple to grow beyond its current 3 percent to 4 percent share of the computer market because of its switch this year to Intel Corp chips, the same used by its PC rivals.

With the iMac, the MacBook laptop and Mac Mini computer already shipping with Intel chips, Apple is about halfway through the transition, which the company says will be completed by the end of the year.

Some think another boost in Mac sales might come from Apple's historic release earlier this month of software that gave Mac-intosh users an easy way to install Microsoft Corp's Windows operating system and switch between the two platforms on a Mac.

Meanwhile, iPods are still dominating the portable media player market. More than 8.5 million units were shipped during the second quarter, up 61 percent from the year-ago period, the company said.

"We're thrilled about the quarter," Peter Oppenheimer, Ap-ple's chief financial officer, said in a phone interview. "It's the second best revenue quarter we've ever had, topped only by last quarter."
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