Apple has reported a record number of iPhones and iPad sales in the second quarter of 2011, powering revenues of $28.6 billion, also a record.
Brian White, an analyst with Ticonderoga Securities, simply used the word "wow" in the title of a note to his clients.
"Apple deliver[ed] nothing short of a blowout performance," White said in that note on Tuesday.
Apple's revenues were the fourth consecutive quarter over the $20 billion mark, and represented an 82% increase over the same period last year.
The $28.6 billion in revenue was significantly higher than Wall Street's average projection of $25 billion, and beat the company's conservative estimate three months ago of just $23 billion by 24%.
Profits were $7.31 billion, yet another record for a quarter, up 125% from the same quarter of 2010.
"They knocked it out of the park," Brian Marshall, an analyst with Gleacher & Co., told
Computerworld after Apple's earnings call on Tuesday. "They just crushed it."
Marshall, other analysts and Apple executives all pointed to iPhone and iPad sales as the driving forces for the record quarter.
"The quarter was driven by dramatic growth in iPhone and iPad sales," Peter Oppenheimer, Apple's chief financial officer, said during the conference call.
Apple sold 20.3 million iPhones, up 142% over the same period last year and a 9% increase over the first quarter of 2011, which was the previous record. On a revenue basis, the iPhone's contribution was 46.6% of total revenues, more than two-and-a-half times that of the Mac or over twice that of the iPad.
What impressed Ezra Gottheil, an analyst with Technology Business Research, wasn't simply the strong iPhone sales, but that Apple was able to maintain its high margin on the smartphone and sell more than 20 million during the quarter even though it didn't release a new model last month, as it has done in three out of the last four years.
"The ASP [average sales price] of the iPhone hasn't moved noticeably at all, which surprised me," Gottheil said. "They keep building and building them, but the ASP doesn't move."
Apple's decision to push back the launch of the next iPhone to this fall -- most experts have pegged September as the most likely month -- didn't hurt sales of the current model, Gottheil also noted.
Meanwhile, Apple sold 9.2 million iPads, nearly triple the number it sold in the same quarter last year and almost double the 4.7 million it sold in the first three months of 2011.
Apple launched the iPad 2 in mid-March, just weeks before the start of the second quarter, and only recently has been able to meet demand, and then only in some markets.
