Apple’s Earnings Released Crushing Estimates and iPad Sales Soar

iPads, iPods, iPhones, Macs and iTunes oh my Jobs! Apple released first quarter results that surprised and beat the street with profit up $6.43 a share which was up from $3.67 last year and even beat Cramer’s “wild high” estimate of $6. Sales dramatically increased from $15.683B from a year ago to $26.74B this past quarter.

How could this happen? After all my partner mentioned:

This isn’t going to be a device that everyone wants or needs. If you’re already a laptop owner, you’re probably not foaming at the mouth for one of these. Sure a touchscreen is nice, but is it nicer than having Flash support in your Web browser?

Consumers disagreed and purchased 7.33 billion iPads in this past quarter! When the iPads were about to launch less than a year most analysts guessed that 4 billion iPads would be sold in the first year with the “Apple fanboy” analysts guesstimating 7 billion iPads to be sold in a year!

Ok, so the iPad numbers were incredible. There’s no way the iPod numbers could do well. After all, everyone has an iPod or MP3 device right? Not so much as consumers saw fit to purchase 19.45 million iPods in the past quarter. Maybe the iPhone numbers were weak? Then again with 16.24 million iPhone units, you really can’t.

Maybe Apple has become a consumer electronic and portable company and the Mac sales are lacking? Nope, over 4.13 million Macs were sold last quarter!

“We had a phenomenal holiday quarter with record Mac, iPhone, and iPad sales,” said Steve Jobs, Apple’s CEO. “We are firing on all cylinders, and we’ve got some exciting things in the pipeline for this year, including iPhone 4 on Verizon, which customers can’t wait to get their hands on.”

This news must be bitter sweet for Apple and Apple follower’s as the news comes one day after Steve Jobs announced that he was granted a medical leave of absence to focus on his health.

As a disclaimer, I am an Apple stock holder and plan to remain a long term investor in the company considering the pipeline of products Apple should be releasing that consumers obviously are interested in investing their money on. In case you are interested, Jim Cramer set the price for Apple at $400 per share while the stock is currently trading after hours around $344.90.