Apple Q3 Earnings Call: What Else Was Said During Q&A

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Yesterday Apple offered its investors, fans and not only, its quarterly earnings call and while the whole numbers stuff was generally boring, the Q&A session that followed the actual report was a little more interesting. Apple answered to various questions on the new iPhone 4, iPad, Mac and iPod.

Having listened to it, I’ll tell you from the beginning that Apple is selling as many iPhone 4 and iPad units as they can make. That phrase has been repeated a bunch of times to answer various questions, and probably to show everyone how popular the iPhone 4 and iPad are even if one comes with a Death Grip issue and the other one has plenty of shortcomings itself.

But let’s see what Apple said about its most important products!

On the iPhone

The company sold plenty of iPhones this past quarter and the iPhone 4 performed quite well in its first weekend. The antennagate scandal only affects a few people and the iPhone 4 returns are less than the iPhone 3GS and, of those, just a few are determined by the Death Grip. Apple will give out bumpers to everyone owning an iPhone 4 which will lead to an overall loss of $175 million in the holiday quarter. Cupertino is still “happy” with AT&T and there’s no reason to talk about future (Verizon) plans right now. As for that Android rival, Apple will not exactly comment, as it wants to focus on iPhone instead which is still growing at an impressive rate.

On the Mac

That’s where, in my opinion, and disregarding the iPad for a bit, Apple really shined this quarter. The iPad didn’t cannibalize Macs, in fact Apple sold a record of Macs this quarter, especially in Europe and Asia. And that happened during the iPad launch, a product that also sold quite well in the first three months. And Apple is not worried that, at some point, customers will choose iPads over Macs. In case that happens they’ll also choose iPads over PCs which basically means Apple is still the one to make lots of money.

On the iPad

Counting all iOS devices sold by Apple since 2007, we now have over 100 million such machines out there. That’s an impressive number and so is the number of sold iPads. Apple sold over 3 million units so far which is an outstanding performance for a device launched last quarter. Again, Apple is making more and more iPads, but it sells them as fast as it’s making them. Keeping up with demand is really difficult but as long as there’s no iPad competitor out there people will wait for Apple to make more iPads for them.

On the iPod

The gadget that brought back Apple into the spotlights a few years ago is the iPod. And while Apple sold less iPods this quarter, it still sold 9.41 million of them. That’s a major product for Apple, which apparently also encouraged people to choose Macs on the long run. Add to that the iTunes store which brings in lots of cash from music, video, apps and eBooks sales and you have a great universe ready to be taken advantage of. And that’s exactly what Apple will do.

On iAds

Apple didn’t have that much to comment on the iAds section of its business. iAd deployment has just started and, with 100 million iOS devices out there, and the number is growing, we’re probably going to look at another important revenue stream for Apple in the very near future.

How many Apple products do you currently own?