Apple predicted a $25 billion quarter, but as is their want, they blew the doors off that with $28.27 billion being the final number.

While this wasn’t their biggest gross quarter ever – that was last quarter with $28.5 billion – the fourth quarter of the company’s financial year ended up being a record for profits.  Apple reported $6.62 billion, or $7.05 per diluted share. This compares to revenue of $20.34 billion and net quarterly profit of $4.31 billion, or $4.64 per diluted share, in the year-ago quarter. Gross margin was 40.3 percent compared to 36.9 percent in the year-ago quarter. International sales accounted for 63 percent of the quarter’s revenue.

Each category of Apple products broke down for year over year as follows:

  • Macs – 4.89 million units, up 26 percent from the same quarter last year
  • iPhones – 17.07 million units, up 21 percent from the same quarter last year
  • iPod – 6.62 million units, a decline of 27 percent from the same quarter last year
  • iPad – 11.12 million units, up 166 percent from the same quarter last year
  • Apple retail stores – $10.7 million average per store, compared to $11.8 million per store from the same quarter last year

“We are thrilled with the very strong finish of an outstanding fiscal 2011, growing annual revenue to $108 billion and growing earnings to $26 billion,” said Tim Cook, Apple’s CEO. “Customer response to iPhone 4S has been fantastic, we have strong momentum going into the holiday season, and we remain really enthusiastic about our product pipeline.”

“We are extremely pleased with our record September quarter revenue and earnings and with cash generation of $5.4 billion during the quarter,” said Peter Oppenheimer, Apple’s CFO. “Looking ahead to the first fiscal quarter of 2012, which will span 14 weeks rather than 13, we expect revenue of about $37 billion and we expect diluted earnings per share of about $9.30.”

The trend of the iPod division being the weakest link continued.  The iPod Touch still accounts for over half of all iPod sales.  Despite the decline of sales yet again, the overall iPod line still accounts for over 70 percent of all MP3 player sales, which says to us that people are definitely losing interest in stand-alone music players.

The Mac is still tracking ahead of the overall PC market, and it seems that the iMac is leading the way.

Overall the company still sees the iPad 2 as the leading tablet, based mostly on how it is being adopted into more and more unusual use cases from appearing in airplane cockpits to Lowes stores.

The retail stores did see a decline for the first time in a while falling from an average of $11.8 million per store for the same quarter last year to $10.7 million this year.  The belief from Apple is that this was based on the lack of a new iPhone in the quarter, and the increase in the number of rumors that a new version would be released in the fall.  Despite the sales decline, Apple is on track to open 30 new stores in the near future with 21 of them being outside of the U.S.  There are also plans to remodel and move several stores in the States that have been outstripped by their traffic, which hit a new high of 77.5 million visitors in the quarter.

How do you feel Apple did this quarter?