Mac, iPhone push Apple’s profit 47% higher

Apple, in its recent history, has overcome nearly every obstacle thrown its way. Now
it has dealt with another: the burden of high expectations.

Apple managed to surprise optimistic investors, posting a 47 per cent increase in profit in the fourth quarter and handily beating investors’ estimates. Renewed sales of Macintosh laptops and the continued popularity of the iPhone around the world helped to lift Apple’s bottom line.

‘‘It’s a pretty impressive quarter, given that consumers are still trying to figure out whether they want to spend again,’’ said Gene Munster, a securities analyst at Piper Jaffray.

Shares of Apple have already nearly doubled this year, and investors pushed up the stock throughout what appeared to be a profitable summer. Wall Street has been impressed by rebounding momentum in the Mac business and Apple’s leadership in the battle for smartphones — the versatile phones that make calls and run thousands of applications.

Moreover, the return of Steven P Jobs, the chief executive, to the public spotlight at an Apple event in September to introduce new iPods has calmed fears about management turbulence at the company.

Apple, based in Cupertino, California, posted particularly strong gains in the computer segment while many of its rivals were still struggling to recover from the recession’s effect on consumer spending. Apple said it sold 3.05 million Macs in the quarter, up about 17 per cent from the 2.6 million it sold in the same quarter last year. Global PC sales rose 2.3 per cent in the third quarter of the year, according to the market tracking firm IDC.

Mac sales were also helped by renewed back-to-school buying in the United States and the June introduction of Snow Leopard, the latest version of its Mac operating system. Macintosh sales have grown faster than the rest of the PC market in 19 of the past 20 quarters.

Apple continued to mine gold from the summer introduction of a new smartphone, the iPhone 3GS. Apple sold 7.4 million phones in the quarter, up from 6.9 million units sold in the same quarter a year earlier and ahead of Wall Street’s expectation of about seven million iPhones.

But there were indications that the company could have done even better. Timothy D Cook, Apple’s chief operating officer, indicated that demand for the 3GS had exceeded expectations and that it had taken the company until early October to get supply and demand balanced in some countries.

Apple executives added that they planned to introduce the iPhone on October 30 in China through a partnership with China Unicom, one of the country’s largest mobile carriers. ‘‘This is the largest market in the world in terms of total phones, and it’s very important we get started to make it as large as possible in smartphones,’’ Cook said.

Not even the iPod, which has been slowly fading as a stand-alone business, seriously hurt the quarter for Apple. The company sold 10.2 million iPods during the quarter, slightly behind the pace of 10.4 million that Wall Street had projected for the company.

But Apple took pains to point out that sales of the iPod Touch, which can run applications as the iPhone does, had doubled over the same period last year.

For the quarter that ended September 26, Apple said its net income had risen to $1.67 billion, or $1.82 a share. That was up from $1.14 billion, or $1.26 a share, in the quarter a year ago. Revenue rose to $9.87 billion, from $7.9 billion last year.

That easily beat the already optimistic expectations of analysts, who had projected that Apple would announce revenue of $9.2 billion and net income of $1.42 a share, according to a survey conducted by Thomson Reuters.

Looking ahead, Apple projected earnings for the December quarter of about $1.70 a share and gross margins that fell short of analysts’ predictions. Apple said that new products would have lower margins than their predecessors. Analysts are expecting earnings closer to $1.91 a share, saying that Apple is notoriously conservative in estimating profits.

Asked about iPhone competitors like Motorola, Research In Motion and Palm, Apple executives took the opportunity to brag.

‘‘We feel very good suiting up and competing against anyone,’’ Cook said. ‘‘People are really just trying to catch up with the first iPhone that was announced two years ago, and we have long since moved beyond that.’’