Apple has reported yet another quarter of strong growth, revealing it nearly doubled its Q2 profit on strong iPhone demand, allaying the fears of the jittery investors that had been driving down its stock price.
The company posted a profit for its fiscal second quarter of $11.6 billion, up 94% from the previous year. This represents $12.30 per share profit, roundly beating the $10.02 per share expectations of analysts polled byBloomberg.
Revenue rose 59% to $39.2 billion, with the company selling 35.1 million iPhones during the quarter. Launches of the iPhone 4S in China and 21 other countries in January - and China Telecom's own launch of the iPhone 4S in March - helped make up for sales declines in Apple's domestic US market.
But while iPhone sales exceeded analyst forecasts, Apple slightly missed the analysts' expectation with sales of 11.8 million iPads during the quarter.
Gross margins improved to 47.4%, from 41.4% in the same period last year.
The company is forecasting revenue for the current quarter of around $34 billion, and profit of $8.68 per share, but this is below analysts' targets of $37.5 billion in sales and $9.96 per share profit.
Apple stock climbed 7.77% in after hours trading to $603.81, after two weeks of declines due to nervous investors.
Separately, a top Chinese government official has sided with Proview Technology in the legal battle over the rights to the iPad name in China. This could be bad news for Apple, considering the increasing importance of the market to the company.