Apple Posts Lower Q4 Revenues, Profits

Apple has posted Q4 revenues of $28.27bn (£18bn) and net profits of $6.6bn, off the back of Q4 sales of 17.1m iPhones and 11.1m iPads.

The numbers are slightly down on the previous quarter, when Apple posted revenues of $28.6bn and profits of $7.3bn. iPhone sales were also higher in the previous quarter, at 20.3m, but the 4th quarter iPad figure is an improvement on the 9.3m iPads sold in Q3. Full year profits came in at $25.9bn, an 83 per cent increase on the previous year, on full year revenues of $108bn.

Nonetheless, the Q4 figures will disappoint analysts, who had been hoping for sales of 20m iPhones. Apple’s shares fell by almost 5 per cent in after-hours trading. The company says the figures are due to customers holding off buying iPhones in September, in anticipation of the launch of the iPhone 4S, which a lot of people, of course, were expecting to be the iPhone 5.

Away from phones, Apple sold 4.9m Mac computers in Q4, 2011, an improvement on the Q3 figure of 4m. Sales of iPods were down, at 6.6m, compared to 7.5m in Q3.