Apple's Rainy Season

At the Macworld conference last week, Apple CEO Steve Jobs preannounced the company's sales total as well as the number of iPods and computers the company shipped. The total revenue and iPod sales figures were far higher than analysts had generally predicted.

But while the just-completed quarter was a good one for Apple, the company offered a disappointing outlook for its current period. The company expects to earn 38 cents a share -- or 42 cents a share excluding options costs -- on sales of $4.3 billion.

Wall Street had previously predicted that the company would earn 48 cents a share before costs in the current quarter, on $4.62 billion in sales. In the same period last year, Apple posted a profit of 34 cents a share -- also not including stock options costs -- on $3.24 billion in sales.

Shares of Apple closed off $2.22, or 2.6%, to $82.49 in regular trading on Wednesday.

Apple's results benefited in part from the company's quarter having one more week -- 14 in all -- than did the year-ago period. That week encompassed the period between Christmas and New Year's Day, which Oppenheimer said was -- and has been in the past -- a "strong week" for Apple. Oppenheimer declined to quantify Apple's results in any way for the week.

Aside from the extra week, Apple's results in the holiday period were driven primarily by iPod sales. The company sold 14 million iPods in the quarter, garnering $2.91 billion in revenue. Sales on a unit basis were up 207% and dollar sales were up 140% from the 2004 holiday quarter.

While the iPod line has been central to Apple's resurrection over the last several years, that result marked the first quarter in which sales of the digital music players made up a majority of Apple's overall sales or topped the revenue brought in by its Macintosh computer line.