Apple Computer last night reported that profits in the most recent quarter surged 41% from a year ago to $410m, pumped up by red-hot sales of iPod music players.
Earnings for the fiscal second quarter to April 1 equated to 47 cents a share as compared to 34 cents during the same quarter a year earlier, according to the California company. The earnings topped analyst expectations by four cents a share.
Apple revenues rose 34% to $4.35 billion for the quarter, the company announced.
'We're very pleased to report the second highest quarterly sales in Apple's history,' said Apple's chief financial officer Peter Oppenheimer. Oppenheimer predicted the company's third quarter would see revenue of about $4.2-4.4 billion and per-share earnings of 39 to 43 cents.
'We've generated over $10 billion in revenue and almost $1 billion in earnings in the first half of fiscal 2006,' said Apple CEO Steve Jobs. 'Our transition to Intel processors is going very well, and our music business just experienced another quarter of outstanding growth,' he said.
Apple shipped 1,112,000 Macintosh computers and 8,526,000 iPods during the quarter ending April 1, marking a 4% growth in Macintosh sales and a 61% leap in iPod shipments from the same time in 2005.
