On Tuesday Apple held its fiscal fourth quarter conference call to discuss its financial results for the past quarter. The call which featured a rare and surprise appearance from company CEO Steve Jobs.

Macs

  • Sold 2.61 million Macs, best quarter ever.
  • Of those sales 936,000 were desktops and 1,675,000 were notebooks.
  • Macs accounted for less than half of Apple’s total revenue at 45.9 percent.
  • 90-percent of Apple notebooks feature LED-backlit displays, they’re also the companies greenest products. “You’ll hear more about this in the future,” Jobs said.
  • Unibody enclosures are responsible for the low-margin guidance but this will improve.
  • Netbooks remain a “nascent category.”
  • Apple considers the iPhone a form of netbook. The company has “interesting ideas” if the netbook field evolves.
  • 3-4 weeks of channel inventory for Macs.

Apple TV and iPhone

  • Sold 6,892,000 iPhones during the quarter and earned about $806M; this is more than all previous quarters combined.
  • The iPhone would have represented 39 percent of all of Apple’s revenue, if revenue wasn’t deferred over 24 months.
  • A “significant” proportion of iPhone sales were international. Many of these were to first-time iPhone owners.
  • iPhone business is too large to ignore, thus the company will reveal its pre-GAAP revenue.
  • Apple beat RIM’s BlackBerry shipments last quarter; they shipped 6.1 million handsets.
  • Apple is now the third-largest mobile phone supplier in terms of revenue. Nokia and Samsung are first and second respectively while LG and Motorola are fourth and fifth.
  • iPhone inventory was less than 6 weeks for the 44 countries launched before August. There are 2 million iPhones listed in inventory around the world.
  • Apple TV is still just a “hobby” and will remain that way in 2009.

iPod and iTunes

  • Customers will download the 200 millionth app from the App Store tomorrow, with the figure being reached in just 102 days. There are over 5,500 apps in 62 countries. “Competitors are scrambling to copy the App Store, but it’s not easy,” Jobs said.
  • Appel sold the most iPods it has ever managed in a non-holiday quarter.
  • NPD reports that Apple has 70-percent of MP3 player market in the US.
  • 4-6 weeks of iPod channel inventory.

Retail Stores

  • Apple retail stores managed to sell 596,000 Mac units and generate $1.718B in revenue.
  • Over half of all retail Macs are sold to new customers.
  • 31 new stores in the quarter for a total of 247.
  • Working on an average of 226 stores open during the quarter, about $7.6M was earned per store.
  • 42.7 million visitors to retail stores.