Liveblog: Apple’s Q1 2013 earnings results conference call

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As previously announced, today Apple is reporting its Q1 2013 earnings results. There is much uncertainty going into today’s call with Apple shares down significantly in recent months to roughly $500 since hitting a high of over $700 per share in September. With the iPhone 5 landing in a total of 100 countries last month, as well as iPad mini making its way to new markets, Wall Street estimates Apple will report between 47.5 million and 53 million iPhones sold and iPad sales between 23 million and 25 million. Compare that with Apple’s Q1 numbers last year: 37 million iPhones and 15.43 million iPads sold. Earlier this week Verizon reported 6.2M iPhone activations for the quarter, around half of which were iPhone 5 sales.

We’ll be providing blow-by-blow coverage of the earnings call in our live blog below at 2 PM Pacific/5 PM Eastern time. Stay tuned to 9to5Mac.com’s homepage for additional coverage:

Head below for updates…4:20 —  Check out our preview of Apple’s 2013 earnings here while we wait for Apple’s press release to hit.

4:30 — Apple just posted its earnings release announcing record quarterly revenue of 54.5 billion, record quarterly net profit of $13.1 billion, 47.8 million iPhones sold, 22.9 million iPads sold, 4.1 million Macs sold, and 12.7 million iPods.

4:35 — Apple stock down as low as 485 in after hours trading:

— Apple isn’t separating laptop and desktop numbers this year in its release:

5:01 — The call is beginning.

— Tim Cook and CFO Peter Oppenheimer will kick things off.

— Cook is talking numbers: New records for iPhone and iPad sales.

— Cook says Apple “unwilling to cut corners” delivering best customer experience. Over 400 Apple retail stores.

— Cook says tomorrow marks the anniversary of the first Macintosh introduction.

— We’ve sold now over half a billion iOS devices… 10 per second last quarter.

— Oppenheimer taking over.

— New quarterly records for iPhone and iPad. Highest quarter revenue and net income. 8.2B Y-O-Y increase.

— Oppenheimer talking numbers 17.2B operating margin, $13.1 billion, 47.8 million iPhones sold, 22.9 million iPads sold, 4.1 million Macs sold, and 12.7 million iPods.

–New format for reporting. Apple consolidating numbers for product lines. i.e. laptop and desktop numbers are now combined. New format will provide greater visibility and transparency in results.

— 3.7M iPhones per week in the quarter. 10M increase over last quarter. Strong iPhone growth in Greater China, doubled year over year.

— 4-6 weeks target channel inventory for iPhone.

— 1.7M iPads per week, 60% increase per week Y-O-Y

— State and local government rapidly adopting iPad. Virginia, Texas issuing iPads to lawmakers.

— 4.1M Macs compared to 5.2M a year ago. 16% decline.

— We believe our Mac sales would have been much higher without iMac constraints.

— iTunes generated record 2.1B revenue. All-time records for Movies, Music, and Apps.

— Added iTunes music stores to 56 countries. Now 119 countries total.

–App Store record December quarter with 2B downloads. Over 300,000 native iPad apps.

–Paid developers over $7 B.

–2B iMessages sent per day

–11 new retail stores. 4 in China. 401 stores total.

–23K visitors per store, per week

— Cash: 137.1B at the end of December quarter. Increase of 16B

— Board of directors will issue dividend of $2.65 per share on Feb. 14

–Apple expecting between $41 billion and $43 billion for second quarter.

— Sold over 75 million iOS devices during the quarter.

— Call ending. Q&A starting.

–Tim Cook talking China:”In terms of the geographic distribution, we saw our highest growth in China and it was into the triple digits.” “I would characterize it as we are extremely pleased.”

— On competitors focusing on larger screens: Cook says iPhone 5 offers most advanced display in the industry. “No one comes close” to matching the quality without sacrificing one handed use. We believe we picked the right one.

— On iPhone demand. Cook:  If you look at the iPhone sales.. we were really constrained for the first part of the quarter. iPhone 4 was in constraint for the entire quarter.

— Cook says supply chain is very complex, supplier performance can vary, there is a ordinate long list of things that would make any single data point is not a great proxy for the production.

— On rearranging of guidance in earnings reports: Peter says going forward we’re going to provide a range of guidance that “we believe we’re likely to report within.”

— On the importance of marketshare preservation: Cook: “The most important thing to Apple is to make the best products in the world. We aren’t interested in revenue for revenue sake. We want to make only the best products…

— On declining Mac numbers: Cook: “If you look at the previous year, our Mac sales were about 5.2M. The difference is 1.1… iMac were down by 700k units Y-O-Y…. There were limited weeks of ramping on these products (iMacs) during the quarter.” We left the quarter with significant constraints on iMacs. Our sales would have been significantly higher… Our channel inventory was down by over 100K units at the beginning of the quarter.

–Cook says market for PCs is weak… “we sold 23 million iPads, we obviously could have sold more than this because we could not build enough iPad minis to come into a demand balance… Im sure there was some cannibalization of Macs there.” If you look at our portables alone we were inline with IDC’s projections of market growth.

–Cook says product pipeline full. On Maps: We have already seen improvements. Improved satellite information and services. We’ll continue to significantly improve maps.

— On iPad mini demand: Peter says its hard to know about iPad mini sales. We wish we could have made more. We ended quarter with significant backlog.

— On China: Cook: We saw exceptional growth with iPhones. We shipped iPad very late in the quarter and despite that saw very nice growth. We are expanding in Apple retail there. We now have 11 stores. Many more to open. Premium retail sellers are up. We’re making great progress. It’s clear that China is already our second largest region and there is a lot of potential there.

— Gene Munster asks about Apple TV and content distribution: Cook: “in terms of the product we sell today. We sold more last quarter than we have ever before. It was up almost 60% YOY. There is very good growth with that product. What was a small niche at one time… this is an area of intense interest for us and I tend to believe there is a lot we can contribute in this space.

— Cook says we believe we can achieve supply/demand balance on iPad mini later in the quarter. Were confident we’re significantly increase the supply but not sure we’ll achieve a supply/demand balance during the quarter

— On tablet market and cannibalization: Cook says “we never fear cannibalization.” We know iPad will cannibalize Macs, that doesnt worry us. It’s already cannibalizing some. I think the tablet market will be larger than the PC market at some point. I see cannibalization as a huge opportunity.

— On the pace of LTE rollouts: Cook: Today we have 24 carriers that provide LTE support for iPhone 5. Next week, we’re adding 36 more carriers for LTE support. These carriers will be in countries currently not supporting LTE.  Italy, Sweden, Denmark, Philippines… over 300 million subscribers.

— Oppenheimer says iPhone 5 has been fastest rollout ever. Customers love iPad mini and price reduced iPad 2.

— On a lower priced iPhone: Cook: Im not going to go into our pricing strategy. We feel great about the opporunity of getting customers to buy products through buying other Apple products.

— And we’re finished!