Booming iPad and iPhone sales push Apple quarterly profits up 78%

APPLE, whose chief executive Steve Jobs is taking a medical leave of absence, posted a 78% jump in quarterly profit, helped by sales of iPads, iPhones and Macintosh computers.

Net income in the fiscal first quarter rose to $6 billion (€4.48bn), or $6.43 a share, from $3.38bn, or $3.67, a year earlier, Apple said yesterday. Analysts projected profit of $5.41 a share, the average of estimates compiled by Bloomberg.

Sales increased 71% to a record $26.7bn in the quarter, typically Apple’s strongest, after it sold 7.33 million iPad tablet computers in the first Christmas season for the device.

“It was a very good quarter,” said Jane Snorek, who helps oversee about $75bn at Nuveen Asset Management.

Apple gained 4.5% to $356.01 in extended trading, after earlier falling $7.83 to $340.65. The shares rose 53% last year. The company is the world’s second-most valuable company behind Exxon Mobil.

Jobs, 55, who has been fighting a rare form of cancer since 2004, handed over day-to-day operations to chief operating officer Tim Cook. The company is likely to fare well on his watch, said Barry Jaruzelski, a partner at Booz & Co.

Analysts had predicted first-quarter sales of $24.4bn.

Apple sold 16.2m iPhones, 4.13m Mac computers and 19.5m iPod media players, according to the statement.

Apple, whose potential US customer base for the iPhone will almost double by adding Verizon Wireless as a carrier next month, said profit this quarter will be $4.90 a share on sales of $22bn.

Analysts estimate Apple will have second-quarter profit of $4.47 a share on sales of $20.9bn.

Jobs, co-founder of Apple in 1976, will continue as the chief executive, according to a company statement. After being ousted in 1985, he returned in 1997 and transformed it from a computer-industry also-ran into the world’s largest technology company by market value.