Earnings call highlights

Today’s earnings call beat most analyst expectations.  With the exception of snapping over five years of Mac growth with a 3% downturn, you’d have to rate Apple’s performance as exceptional. Some notes:

• iPhone sales blew everyone away.  Although Apple reported iPhone sales of 3.8 Million (Called it!), they measured only until March 17th, the date of the 3.0 Beta release.  That means the rest of the quarter’s sales haven’t been tabulated and won’t be until 3.0 is released this summer.
• Apple’s Mac Sales were down 3% largely due to 11% decline in educational sales.  However last year they had just released the MacBook Air which generated extraordinary amounts of sales.  Also the PC industry in general saw double digit losses on mostly low margin netbooks.
• Music sales were up 3% – even in this economy
• iPod marketshare – over 70% in the US and growing overseas
• NetBook?  Same answer. We can’t build a product that they’d be proud of.  "For us it’s about doing great products. When I’m looking at what’s sold in the Netbook market, I see cramped keyboards, junky hardware, very small screen, bad software. Not a consumer experience that we would put the Mac brand on."  "We offer the touch and iPhone" "If we find a way to deliver an innovative product that really makes a contribution, we’ll do that. We have some interesting ideas. The product pipeline is fantastic for the Mac."- Tim Cook
• Steve Jobs’ return? Status Quo – end of June (misses WWDC)
• Why stay with AT&T?  CDMA is dead and Apple wanted one phone for the world.
• China?  Apple hope to have an iPhone there within a year.