Apple Computer lsat night said it had stopped the rot in its business during the last three months of 2003, emerging from the red with soaring sales of iPod digital music players.
In the three months to December 27 - the first quarter of its business year - Apple made a net profit of $63m or 17 cents a share, reversing a year-earlier loss of $8m. Sales surged 36% to just over $2 billion.
'It was an outstanding quarter for Apple, with double-digit unit and revenue growth and over 730,000 iPods sold,' Apple chief executive Steve Jobs said in a statement.
Jobs added that there was strong demand for Mac OS X, the new operating system for the Macintosh personal computer. iPod is a digital music player that downloads tunes from the Internet. The iTunes Music Store offers song downloads from the Internet for 99 cents.
The company expects a third consecutive quarter of double-digit growth in both revenue and earnings, with revenue of about $1.8 billion and earnings per share of eight to 10 cents.
