Apple tops Wall Street's estimates in record quarter

Apple posted its best second quarter in company history, on strong sales of Macs and iPhones.

One chink in Apple's armor was its iPod sales, which only managed to increase 1% year-over-year to 10,644,000. However, sales of Macintosh computers were up 51% to 2,289,000, and the company sold 1.7 million iPhones.

458,000 of those Macs were sold through the company's retail stores, half of which were new to the platform, CFO Peter Oppenheimer said during a conference call. Apple's share of the US MP3 player market was 73%, and the company said it saw increases in just about every market it operates in.

With the quarterly numbers for the iPhone now public, attention turns to AT&T to see how many of these phones were actually activated through the carrier, rather than unlocked for use on others.

The Cupertino company has also been experiencing some supply issues in its US stores, chief operating officer Tim Cook admitted. He attributed this to those purchasing in store with the intention to unlock, but could not provide any estimates as to what percentage of those sold could be.

Profits were up 36% to $1.05 billion on $7.51 billion of revenue or $1.16 per share, from $5.26 billion in the year ago quarter. CEO Steve Jobs lauded the performance of the company, saying it had "momentum to launch some terrific new products in the coming quarters."

Indeed, during the call Oppenheimer hinted at a refresh to Apple's laptop line, which itself saw a 61% year over year increase. Desktops also increased during the quarter 37%.

The street had been expecting revenue of $6.96 billion and earnings of $1.07 per share. Apple said it expects to post revenue of about $7.2 billion in its fiscal third quarter, slightly higher than Wall Street estimates of $7.15 billion.