Apple posted its most recent quarterly earnings on Tuesday, comfortably outdoing Wall Street's most optimistic expectations and marking the biggest quarterly profit ever made by a public company.
During the first quarter with the iPhone 6 smartphones on sale for the entire period, the Cupertino company sold a record 74.4m iPhones in the three months to the end of 2014, 9 million more than expected, according to CNBC. "This volume was hard to comprehend," CEO Tim Cook said during a conference call to discuss the earnings. "34,000 iPhones sold per hour, 24 hours a day, every day of the quarter."
iPad disappoints
Sales of the iPad continue to disappoint, with the company selling 21.4 million units, down from the 26 million reported a year ago. The success of its latest big-screen iPhone 6 Plus was speculated to have contributed to cannibalising sales of the iPad, and the tablet is being squeezed both by lower-priced competition and a resurgence in laptop sales.
Watch out in April
In addition to sharing its shining earnings report Apple revealed that it plans to ship its first wearable, the Apple Watch, in April of this year. With a relatively high base price it is unclear whether the wearable will be able to tempt those other than devoted Apple fans to adopt this technology.
Apple is forecasting revenue of $52bn to $55bn for the current quarter, versus analysts' expectations of $53.79bn. Following the news, shares rose more than 5 per cent in trading after the US markets had closed.
