04/23/2008, 7:35pm, EDT
Wednesday, April 23rd
Education grows 35%, Macs generate 59% revenue
Apple today posted its best second quarter in company history, with good news from its education, computer, and iPhone segments. Educational revenue growth was revealed to be 35-percent, which Apple says is the highest growth rate it has seen
Desktop revenue grew 37-percent thanks to strong demand for iMacs, as well as increased sales of its newly-updated Mac Pro. Laptops saw strong growth, with 61-percent additional revenue, due to strong sales of the revised MacBook and MacBook Pro computers, as well as the introduction of the MacBook Air. Apple also commented that MacBook Air numbers are indicative that more than just "road warriors" are purchasing them – the company notes that many students and higher education staff members are using the portable in increasing volume.
Apple remains confident in the 10 million iPhone estimate, with 1.7 million units sold throughout the quarter, thanks to expanded coverage in Austria and Ireland. Total deferred revenue from the iPhone and Apple TV sat at $1.93 billion, up from $1.44 billion from the December quarter.
The recently unveiled iPhone SDK beta has drawn over 200,000 developers to sign up and download a copy, with Apple calling the response "tremendous". Activity concerning the Enterprise beta program – which allows users to synchronize with a Microsoft Exchange server – was dubbed as being "off the charts", with one third of all Fortune 500 companies signing up for the program, and another 400 higher education institutions. Apple states that hundreds of companies and institutes have been accepted, while more are added every week.
Filed under: education, iPhone, Investor, industry, Apple
Other story tags: Mac, SDK, earnings
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I don't mean regarding Apple Fanboy opinions or testudo, Mac user but hater opinions, I mean from real business folks implementing solutions - what is the reasoning.
Also as an aside, Apple needs to allow access to the mulitpin iPod/iPhone port!!!!!!!! This is how thumb-centric text message geeks will begin accepting iPhones and throwing Blackberries in a lake. I would love for someone to create a hardware keyboard or console game pad attachment, because then it would be ... game over.
As for your keyboard attachment, I have one word for you: Bluetooth. I agree that Apple should provide API access to Bluetooth for peripherals, even if I have strong doubts that any kind of standalone keyboard designed to fit in a pocket would actually sell well.
As a further aside, remember the eMate enclosure for the Newton? I wonder if there might be some kind of market for a dock for the iPhone with a keyboard, and hopefully a larger display built in... This kind of capability will become more critical as the iPhone's processing power and application support grow, with the possibility of replacing a traditional computer in a lot of cases.
As for a keyboard, I see no reason to use bluetooth, as it would do more to kill battery life then a dock connected solution. But either would work, if (a) apple allowed access to either, and (b) bluetooth would be allowed to work on anything but the phone aspect. Maybe they'll even figure out how to sync via bluetooth.
But on the emate, I don't believe that was an 'enclosure' for the newton. It was a separate standalone device (which ran NewtonOS).
This is the kind of integration one should EXPECT from the iPhone. I can't imagine that it would be THAT hard to make happen. Plugging things into your computer directly is SO 2004.
1. Wireless sync capabilities like the Zune has. Sorry, but that is a pretty neat feature. Not good for syncing 32GB of songs/movies, but great for updating a single album or daily podcasts. Love this feature on my Zune 80.
2. Keyboard capabilities, either through a dock connector or via bluetooth (iPhone or bluetooth dock adapter for the Touch). I would carry this to class everyday versus a laptop if I could use it for note taking capabilities.
3. Use of the iPod Touch and iPhone as a HARD DRIVE!!!! Even if this involves partitioning part of the devices' memory as a dedicated HDD, I could live with this limitation.
Until these features are available I will keep on using my Zune and my Macbook (dual-boot OSX and Win XP).
Come on Apple, quit stalling and truly give everyone the 21st century Newton!!!