Apple Continues To Move Devices Like Crazy

Apple released its quarterly earnings Tuesday night, and the company continues to sell consumer devices at a crazy clip.

For the product numbers that everyone cares about: The company sold 20.34 million iPhones in the quarter ended June 25, and sold 9.25 million iPads over the same period.

By growth rate compared to the year-ago quarter, that's 142 percent growth for the iPhone and 183 percent growth for the iPad.

Macs beat the PC market with a 14 percent unit increase over the previous year to 3.95 million. Sales of the iPod are dropping -- down 20 percent to 7.54 million units. That's not surprising given that the iPhone and iPad are both supersets of iPod functionality.

Apple revenues and profits, quite recently a fraction of what Microsoft put away each quarter, are now well above Redmond's revenues. Apple had quarterly revenues of $28.57 billion and net profit of $7.31 billion. When Microsoft reports earnings on Thursday, analysts are expecting revenues in the vicinity of $17.25 billion.

In a statement, Apple CEO Steve Jobs said, "We're thrilled to deliver our best quarter ever, with revenue up 82 percent and profits up 125 percent. Right now, we're very focused and excited about bringing iOS 5 and iCloud to our users this fall."

Meanwhile, the lack of a Microsoft tablet with traction is giving the iPad an opportunity to gain a foothold in the enterprise.

During the earnings call, Apple CFO Peter Oppenheimer said 47 percent of Global 500 companies are testing or deploying iPad.

"In the 15 months since iPad is shipped, we've seen iPads used in the enterprise in ways we could have never imagined," Oppenheimer said according to a Seeking Alpha transcript. "Companies like Boston Scientific, Xerox and Salesforce.com are deploying thousands of iPads and revolutionizing how their sales teams engage their customers. iPad is being used inside the country's top hospitals like HCA and Cedars-Sinai and in retail at Nordstrom and at Esteé Lauder's Clinique counters. General Electric, SAP and Standard Chartered have developed internal apps for training, currency tracking and business process management to help make employees even more productive. And Alaska Airlines and American Airlines are using the iPad in cockpit to replace paper-based navigational and reference information pilots carry with him on every flight."

Oppenheimer offered a similar enterprise story for iPhone that underscores the uphill battle for Windows Phone 7 even among enterprise customers. "iPhone continues to be adopted as the standard across the enterprise with 91 percent of the Fortune 500 deployed or testing the device, up from 88 percent last quarter," Oppenheimer said. "We're also seeing great growth in scale worldwide. Today, 57 percent of Global 500 companies are testing or deploying iPhone, fueled by strong employee demand and opportunities for custom App development."

Cupertino is still spinning inside the tornado.

Posted by Scott Bekker on July 20, 2011