Apple turned in strong numbers for the quarter ending Dec. 30: record profit of $1 billion or $1.14 earnings per diluted share, on record quarterly revenue of $7.1 billion, compared to $565 million, or $0.65 per diluted share, in the same quarter last year.
iPhone: While the company and others hype the iPhone in other venues, execs tried to walk a careful line between projecting greatness and managing expectations during the earnings call. Steve Jobs appears at Macworld and in earnings press releases but not on earnings calls, where CFO Peter Oppenheimer and COO Tim Cook answer analysts’ questions—or not, as the case may be. The emphasis was on the latter during Wednesday’s call, with suggestions at various times that more information on iPhone might be forthcoming in the April call closer to the product’s launch. One analyst tried to find out if downloads of software would be allowed or available but didn’t get anywhere. Ditto for people trying to figure out the gross margins.
—The subject of iPhones being sold in Apple retail stores came up more than once as in “come June, they’ll sell a lot of iPhones.” (I do not even want to imagine what my compact “neighborhood” store in the St. Louis Galleria will be like then.) I don’t think anyone asked how they would handle the training for phone sales.
Cisco iPhone lawsuit: They’re sticking with the characterization of the suit as “silly” and the U.S. trademark registration as “tenuous at best.” “We are the first company to ever use the iPhone name for a cellphone and if Cisco wants to challenge us, we are comfortable we will prevail.”
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