Apple quarterly profit rises 12% to $7.75bn

Apple said quarterly profit rose 12 per cent to $7.75 billion, with a jump in iPhone sales helping to make up for a drop in iPad demand.

Apple sold 35.2 million iPhones, up 13 per cent from a year ago, pushing revenue up 6 per cent to $37.4 billion in the fiscal third quarter ended June 28th.

IPad sales fell for the second straight quarter, to 13.3 million. The results show Apple is withstanding competition from smartphone manufacturers led by Samsung, amid increasing anticipation for new devices that chief executive officer Tim Cook has said are in store. The company posted increasing profit for the second consecutive quarter after last year experiencing its first annual slide in at least a decade.

The gain, as well as optimism about coming products, has pushed Apple’s stock up more than 18 per cent this year. Yet the results were mostly in line with analysts’ projections and weren’t the blowout investors have come to anticipate from the company.

Net income was projected to be $7.5 billion, or $1.23 a share, on sales of $37.9 billion. For the fiscal fourth quarter, Apple forecast sales of $37 billion to $40 billion, compared with the $40.6 billion projected by analysts. Gross margin will be 37 per cent to 38 per cent, compared to 37.5 per cent estimated by analysts. - Bloomberg