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."
BUILDUP: US General Dan Caine said Chinese military maneuvers are not routine exercises, but instead are ‘rehearsals for a forced unification’ with Taiwan China poses an increasingly aggressive threat to the US and deterring Beijing is the Pentagon’s top regional priority amid its rapid military buildup and invasion drills near Taiwan, US Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth said on Tuesday. “Our pacing threat is communist China,” Hegseth told the US House of Representatives Appropriations Subcommittee on Defense during an oversight hearing with US General Dan Caine, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. “Beijing is preparing for war in the Indo-Pacific as part of its broader strategy to dominate that region and then the world,” Hegseth said, adding that if it succeeds, it could derail
CHIP WAR: The new restrictions are expected to cut off China’s access to Taiwan’s technologies, materials and equipment essential to building AI semiconductors Taiwan has blacklisted Huawei Technologies Co (華為) and Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corp (SMIC, 中芯), dealing another major blow to the two companies spearheading China’s efforts to develop cutting-edge artificial intelligence (AI) chip technologies. The Ministry of Economic Affairs’ International Trade Administration has included Huawei, SMIC and several of their subsidiaries in an update of its so-called strategic high-tech commodities entity list, the latest version on its Web site showed on Saturday. It did not publicly announce the change. Other entities on the list include organizations such as the Taliban and al-Qaeda, as well as companies in China, Iran and elsewhere. Local companies need
CRITICISM: It is generally accepted that the Straits Forum is a CCP ‘united front’ platform, and anyone attending should maintain Taiwan’s dignity, the council said The Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) yesterday said it deeply regrets that former president Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) echoed the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) “one China” principle and “united front” tactics by telling the Straits Forum that Taiwanese yearn for both sides of the Taiwan Strait to move toward “peace” and “integration.” The 17th annual Straits Forum yesterday opened in Xiamen, China, and while the Chinese Nationalist Party’s (KMT) local government heads were absent for the first time in 17 years, Ma attended the forum as “former KMT chairperson” and met with Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference Chairman Wang Huning (王滬寧). Wang
CROSS-STRAIT: The MAC said it barred the Chinese officials from attending an event, because they failed to provide guarantees that Taiwan would be treated with respect The Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) on Friday night defended its decision to bar Chinese officials and tourism representatives from attending a tourism event in Taipei next month, citing the unsafe conditions for Taiwanese in China. The Taipei International Summer Travel Expo, organized by the Taiwan Tourism Exchange Association, is to run from July 18 to 21. China’s Taiwan Affairs Office spokeswoman Zhu Fenglian (朱鳳蓮) on Friday said that representatives from China’s travel industry were excluded from the expo. The Democratic Progressive Party government is obstructing cross-strait tourism exchange in a vain attempt to ignore the mainstream support for peaceful development
RSS