Apple Reports Mixed Results: $54 Billion Quarterly Revenue (Miss), $13 Billion Profit (Beat)

In what is widely being seen as a miss (except for profit), Apple reported quarterly revenues of $54.5 billion this afternoon. That was slightly below consensus revenue expectations.

The company posted higher profits ($13.1 billion) and earnings per share than expected. Even though they were “record results” according to Apple, analysts’ expectations were extremely high. Accordingly each sales category came in just under anticipated unit sales figures.

For example most analysts expected 50 million iPhones to have been sold in the previous quarter. However the company “only” sold 47.8 million units — characterized by some as a “whiff.”

There’s been a recent sell-off of Apple shares in the run up to today’s earnings announcement, amid fears that demand for the iPhone may be softening and that competition for the iPad is growing.

Here are the device sales figures:

• iPhones: 47.8 million iPhones (vs. 37 million a year ago)
• iPads: 22.9 million (vs. 15.4 a year ago)
• Macs: 4.1 million (vs. 5.2  million a year ago)
• iPods: 12.7 million (vs. 15.4 million a year ago)

Apple generated roughly $23 billion in cash flow this past quarter. Apple’s total cash on hand is now over $130 billion.

These are all huge numbers but because they are slightly below expectations they will confirm some analysts’ fears that the company is faltering. By comparison, yesterday Google announced just over $50 billion in revenue — for the year.

The company’s stock is off roughly $6 in afterhours trading.