Apple yesterday announced results that clearly surprised the market:
Profit rose to $1.23 billion, or $1.35 a share, Apple said today in a statement. Sales gained 12 percent to $8.34 billion in the quarter ended June 27. Analysts on average predicted profit of $1.17 and sales of $8.21 billion, according to a Bloomberg survey.
I don’t doubt that Mr Gruber is going to have a field day with all sorts of people’s incorrect predictions leading up to this quarter, so I’ll leave you to have a watch for his signature ‘Claim Chowder’ posts.
One interesting fact that came out of the results and the conference call is that although sales of the iPhone, Mac and iPod touch are all up, sales of the regular iPods must therefore be a long way down. Sales seem to be indicating that the iPod is dying and is therefore coming to the end of its sales life in its non-touch guise.
I therefore predict that September will see the introduction of both a tablet and nano touch-style iPod players that both run OSX. However, I don’t think that there will be any new non OSX iPods, other than perhaps a new variant on the shuffle. If we see a new shuffle, I also expect to see some sort of evolution on the ‘music player that talks to you’ theme, as I think this concept has room for more innovation.
