Apple saw a dip in its profit by 18 percent despite strong sales for the iPads and iPods.
In the second quarter, Apple reported earnings of $9.5 billion on $43.6 billion in sales. These figures were right on target with the $9.5 billion in profit, and just barely above the $42.3 billion in sales that Wall Street expected. Reportedly, these figures were also above Apple's own expectations, which were between $9.23 and $10.23 per share on sales of $41 billion to $43 billion.
"We are pleased to report record March quarter revenue thanks to continued strong performance of iPhone and iPad," Apple CEO Tim Cook said in a statement. "Our teams are hard at work on some amazing new hardware, software, and services, and we are very excited about the products in our pipeline."
Though these numbers are good, it reports Apple's first year-over-year profit decline in a decade, an 18 percent drop from the year-ago quarter. Apple posted a decline in profit from the previous year's quarter back in 2003, when the company was hit by both the economic downturn and a restructuring charge, and then some.
"Fiscal 2012 results were incredibly strong," Cook told analysts during an earnings call after the news, adding that it was "making it difficult" to compare previous results. Other variables included a higher gross margin, higher strength of the dollar, and what Cook referred to as "historically low" component costs.
