Apple's rising sales contribute to high fourth-quarter earnings

Apple Inc.'s fourth-quarter earnings easily beat Wall Street expectations, as it set a new record for quarterly shipments of its Mac computers and moved more than 1 million iPhones.

Photo: Apple's rising sales contribute to high fourth-quarter earnings

For the quarter that ended Sept. 30, Apple earned $904 million (638.15 million EUR), or $1.01 (.71 EUR) per share, compared with $542 million (382.61 million EUR), or 62 cents per share, in the year-ago quarter.

Apple's fourth-quarter revenue totaled $6.22 billion (4.39 billion EUR), compared with $4.84 billion (3.42 billion EUR) in the same quarter last year.

Analysts polled by Thomson Financial expected earnings of 86 cents per share on $6.07 billion (4.28 billion EUR) in revenue for the period.

Some 1.12 million units of the iPhone were sold in the quarter, and 2.16 million Mac computers were shipped.

In the first quarter of fiscal 2008 Apple anticipates earnings of about $1.42 (1 EUR) per share on revenue of about $9.2 billion (6.49 billion EUR). Analysts on average expect earnings of $1.39 (.98 EUR) per share on sales of $8.58 billion (6.06 billion EUR).