Apple has scored over rival Samsung yet again with record sales during the last quarter.
The company yesterday declared that it had earned a profit of $13.1 billion during the last quarter and sold 51 million iPhones, 26 million iPads and 4.8 million Macs setting an all-time quarterly record.
It also forecast that the revenue stream during the next quarter would be between $42 billion and $44 billion.
The company sold 47.8 million iPhones, 22.9 million iPads and 4.1 million Macs in the last quarter.
Announcing financial results for its quarter ended December 28, 2013, Apple said it has posted record quarterly revenue of $57.6 billion and quarterly net profit of $13.1 billion, or $14.50 per diluted share.
During the same quarter in the previous year, Apple had maintained similar profit margins with revenue of $54.5 billion.
According to Apple, the gross margin was 37.9 per cent compared to 38.6 per cent in the year-ago quarter. International sales accounted for 63 per cent of the quarter’s revenue.
Tim Cook, Apple’s CEO said, “We are really happy with our record iPhone and iPad sales, the strong performance of our Mac products and the continued growth of iTunes, Software and Services.”
In its announcement Apple said its Board of Directors has declared a cash dividend of $3.05 per share of the Company’s common stock.
“We generated $22.7 billion in cash flow from operations and returned an additional $7.7 billion in cash to shareholders through dividends and share repurchases during the December quarter, bringing cumulative payments under our capital return program to over $43 billion,” said Peter Oppenheimer, Apple’s CFO.
Now compare this with Samsung.
The company said the operating profit during the last quarter of 2013 ending December 31, fell 18 per cent to 8.3 trillion won ($7.8 billion), compared to the previous quarter.
A Bloomberg report quoting Lee Sun Tae, a Seoul-based analyst at NH Investment & Securities Co said 2014 will not bring any major gains for Samsung following immense competition from Apple and other new entrants including Chinese players such as Lenovo and Huawei.
“Earnings will remain stagnant this year as the explosive growth of the past two to three years seems to have ended,” the report quotes Sun Tae as saying.
According to him, although the lower-end smartphone market will continue to grow, profits from them will not match that of the high-end models.
While Apple is expected to come out with an all new bigger sized iPhone6, apart from a new phablet sized device this year, Samsung is expected to launch the Galaxy S5.
There are also reports that Samsung might launch a smartphone with its own Tizen UI instead of Android.