to 626,000 in the same
quarter the year before
( 37 percent increase).

• 1,433,000 portables (includ- ing MacBooks and MacBook Pros), compared to 891,000 in the same quarter the year before (61 percent increase).

 

That’s a stunning growth in portables. We might be able to attribute part of that to the 3 pound, 0.76-inch-thick MacBook Air. Even if people didn’t buy this rather pricey model, the heavy publicity surely brought people into Apple stores, where many purchased updated MacBook and MacBook Pro models. Apple is hitting home runs with its notebooks.

However on the consumer electronics side, Apple’s results are disappointing. The company sold 10,644,000 iPods, compared to 10,549,000 in the same 2007 quarter (up 1 percent). However, the small year-on-year growth may indicate that the latest models aren’t appealing, or that the market is beginning to saturate. We’ll have to keep an eye on that.

Despite the nearly flat iPod sales, Apple still made a ton of money. “We’re delighted to report 43 percent revenue growth and the strongest March quarter revenue and earnings in Apple’s history,” said Steve Jobs, Apple’s CEO, in a statement. “With over $17 billion in revenue for the first half of our fiscal year, we have strong momentum to launch some terrific new products in the coming quarters.”

Microsoft, IBM Kick
Revenue Butt Too

Economic slowdown? What slowdown? Apple’s not the only company to have turned in great financial results. Maybe there will be a cooling of the tech market, but it clearly hasn’t happened yet.

Take Microsoft. The mighty juggernaut might be frustrated because it can’t buy Yahoo (yet), but in late April it announced that its fiscal third quarter had revenue of $14.45 billion, with profit of $4.41 billion. That’s twice the revenue of Apple, and four times the profit—even factoring in a payment of $1.42 billion to pay off a European Union fine.

“Our third-quarter results demonstrate the benefit of our diversified business model,” said Chris Liddell, chief financial officer of Microsoft. “Our broad span across geographies, product categories and customer segments is a tremendous asset and supports our outlook for double-digit revenue, operating income and earnings per share growth for this fiscal year and also for fiscal year 2009.”

The company is definitely see-ing growth in different areas. For example, its entertainment and devices division grew its revenue by more than 68 percent in comparison to the same period last year, thanks to sales of more than 19 millions Xbox 360 consoles. The server and tools group grew its revenue by 18 percent year-on-year.

Big Blue turned in good results as well. IBM’s fiscal first quarter 2008 had total revenues

of $24.5 billion, up 11 percent from the same quarter last year. Profit grew even faster, jumping up 26 percent from $1.84 billion to $2.32 billion, comparing the first quarter of 2007 to the same quarter in 2008.

Growth was strong in many areas: global technology services and global business services were both up 17 percent, and software sales were up 14 percent. Fully 65 percent of all revenues came from outside the United States.

Microsoft Wins
the OOXML Election

There weren’t any hanging chads, and nobody called Jimmy Carter to observe the ballot count. What you did have was celebration, particularly at Microsoft and at Ecma (European Computer Manufacturer’s Association), as their Office Open XML file format was formally approved as ISO/IEC 29500. In fact, Microsoft and Ecma began bragging about their victory before the final count was officially tallied and released by the ISO.

This was a tricky issue. Government has long wanted a vendor-neutral standard document file format, so that they could create and store documents without being locked into proprietary software for reading those documents in the future. The Organization for the Advanced for Structured Information Standards, or OASIS, has created such a file format, called OpenDocument Format