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Apple's quarterly revenue hits an all-time high in Q3 2010 of $15.7 billion

But despite iPhone 4, iPhone sales slightly down

Apple's quarterly revenue hits an all-time high in Q3 2010 of $15.7 billion
Apple [NASDAQ: APPL] has announced its Q3 2010 financials, which saw the company hit an all-time revenue total.

Thanks in particular to the iPad launch, and strong iPhone and Mac sales, revenue for the three months ending June 26, was $15.7 billion, up 61 percent year-on-year.

Profit was up 78 percent from Q3 2009 to $3.25 billion, and the company generated over $4 billion of cash.

However it is worth pointing out Apple changed its accounting practices a couple quarters ago, recognising almost all iPhone revenue at once, instead of spreading it over the 24 months of many phone contracts. This makes strict year-on-year comparisons tricky.

Sell, sell, sell

In terms of hardware sales, Apple sold 8.4 million iPhones, up 61 percent year-on-year, and including 1.7 million iPhone 4s as sold during the last three days of the quarter. Overall this is a slight decline from the second quarter total of 8.75 million.

The iPad, which launched April 3 saw total sales of 3.27 million. Apple also experienced a 33 percent jump in Mac sales to 3.47 million, while iPod sales declined 8 percent to 9.41 million.

"It was a phenomenal quarter that exceeded our expectations all around, including the most successful product launch in Apple's history with iPhone 4," said Steve Jobs, Apple's CEO.

"IPad is off to a terrific start, more people are buying Macs than ever before, and we have amazing new products still to come this year."

Invest to profit

Apple ended the quarter with $36 billion in cash, cash equivalents and other short-term securities and other assets, compared to $41.7 billion at the end of Q2 2010. The difference is no doubt due to costs associated with the iPad and iPhone 4 launches.

In this context, the expected $175 million cost of giving away free iPhone 4 bumpers is fairly minor.

Apple's gross margin was 39.1 percent compared to 40.9 percent in the year-ago quarter, and 41.7 percent in Q2 2010. International sales accounted for 52 percent of the quarter's revenue.

[source: Apple]
Contributing Editor

A Pocket Gamer co-founder, Jon is Contributing Editor at PG.biz which means he acts like a slightly confused uncle who's forgotten where he's left his glasses. As well as letters and cameras, he likes imaginary numbers and legumes.