Apple q3 earnings report drowns-out antenna complaints.
Last Friday morning, Steve Jobs humbly confessed, “We’re not perfect, phones aren’t perfect. But we want to make all our users happy.” The confession finally put rumors of super-human powers to rest, and Jobs’s subsequent announcement that Apple would supply free “bumpers” to unhappy iPhone 4 customers put most other extravagant rumors to rest, too. Jobs reassured his worldwide audience that customers who already had invested in bumpers to minimize their “minor inconvenience” will receive full refunds. At the Friday news conference, Jobs reiterated his claim, complete with charts and graphs, that iPhone 4 drops fewer calls than comparable Droid and Blackberry handsets.
Record sales of all Apple products
On Tuesday afternoon, the antenna discussion became “so last week, so totally over it.” In a much-anticipated press conference, Apple announced “stellar” third-quarter earnings, outperforming its own characteristically conservative forecasts and blowing away most Wall Street analysts.
During its third quarter, Apple raked in $15.7 billion(usd) in revenues, netting $3.25 billion(usd) in profits, and earning investors just over $3.50(usd) per share. All of these figures beat even Apple’s best holiday seasons. Not surprisingly, sales of 8.4 million iPhones appeared prominently on the ledgers, as did sales of three-and-a-quarter million iPads. Analysts did express surprise and delight, however, as they discovered that Apple had sold three-and-a-half million Macs during q3, 2010. Many experts surmised that consumers’ dedication to iPhone and iPad contributed to resurgent interest in one of the industry’s oldest, most reliable, and most venerable personal computer brands.
The antenna debacle fades into the rearview mirror.
“The so-called antenna ‘debacle’ got a whole lot more column inches in the financial press than it actually got complaints on the consumer hotline,” observes Danielle Brooks, media analyst at Patterson-Forbes Partners. “As of Tuesday afternoon when the company reported its record-shattering earnings, only one-half of one percent of iPhone 4 buyers had registered complaints, and the majority of them feel perfectly satisfied with the ‘bumper’ plan.” Brooks concludes, “If anything, all the sound and fury about the iPhone 4 antenna proves that we hold Apple to a far higher standard than any other producer in the industry.”
Get apple store discounts with apple store promo codes.
