Updated: Apple’s Q1 Sales: $26.74 Billion; ‘We’re Doing Our Best Work Ever’

Apple Headquarters

People may be wondering: What will happen to Apple with Steve Jobs out of the day-to-day picture? and, Has Apple (NSDQ: AAPL) seen its best days in product innovation? But today Apple is delivering yet more stunning results that show that right now, it is on top of its game. For the fiscal first quarter 2011, ended December 25, 2010 Apple posted its highest ever earnings and revenue figures. Revenues were up 71 percent to $26.74 billion; net profit was $6 billion.

Apple’s wireless products were at the forefront of this growth this quarter: it sold 16.24 million iPhones, an 86 percent unit growth over the year-ago quarter, and accounting for over $10 billion in revnues; and 7.33 million iPads.

Tim Cook, the COO stepping in to oversee day-to-day operations while Jobs is on medical leave, noted that the number of iPhones sold was constrained mainly by supply issues: “We would have sold even more iPhones if we had them,” he said.

Could that shortage also extend to supply problems for the CDMA iPhone 4 that will launch with Verizon in February? “We will do everything possible to get that device into as many hands as possible…We believe the [demand] from Verizon customers will be huge.”

Sales of iPods were down: Apple reported 19.45 million iPods, a seven percent unit decline from a year ago. And Apple also sold 4.13 million Macs during the quarter, a 23 percent unit increase.

Perhaps to shore up against criticism that Apple is being overtaken by Android in terms of market share, Cook was careful to emphasise that cumulatively, there are now 160 million ‘iOS” devices in the market, covering iPhones, iPods and iPads.

In the earnings call there were no direct questions about Steve Jobs, but there were a few that hinted at it. Gene Munster, the high-profile Apple analyst from Piper Jaffray, asked how far ahead the company sets its strategy. Cook declined to comment: “It’s part of the magic at Apple. I don’t want anyone to copy it.”

And taking the question as a cue to elaborate more: “Apple is doing its best work ever…with the depth of cultural innovation that Steve has driven…it has become a habit. We feel very confident about the future of the company.”

Tablets and “vaporware” competition: Apple deflected questions about the rise of a new generation of Android-based tablets, dismissing the products as vaporware until they shipped. As for the current crop? A litany of complaints including poor battery life and the inability to navigate without a stylus deivice.

What’s notable, too, is that the Apple juggernaut not just a U.S. phenomenon: international sales accounted for 62 percent of the quarter’s revenue with particularly strong results in Japan and other countries in Asia.

Apple had identified China several years ago as a “top priority” and the company, and it looks like that has paid off. Apple said it had $2.6 billion in sales in greater China, a four-fold increase over the same quarter a year before when Apple made less than £1 billion; meanwhile, Japan revenues were up 83 percent.

More acquisitions in Asia? “We’re placing more resource in these areas and continue to look for more expansion,” he said.

Some guidance as well on what to exepct in March, at Apple’s next results announcement. Apple expects revenues to be in the region of $22 billion compared to $13.5 billion a year ago, with 38.5 percent margins.

Apple’s revenues for the same quarter a year ago were $15.68 billion and net quarterly profit of $3.38 billion, or $3.67 per diluted share, in the year-ago quarter. Gross margins were down 2.5 percent to 38.5 percent compared to 40.9 percent in the year-ago quarter.

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