Edible Apple

Following Apple earnings announcements, Tim Cook and CFO Peter Oppenheimer typically field a few questions from analysts. Below are a few numbers that were touched upon yesterday that are worthy of looking at.

Macintosh

Mac sales grew 7% year over year, and though this was lower than what analysts were hoping for, Apple this past quarter set new records for Mac sales. Indeed, Apple set Q2 sales records for iPhones and iPads as well. Also note that while Apple’s Mac growth checked in at 7%, it was still markedly better than the 2% growth experienced by the rest of the PC market.

iPhone

iPhone sales were exceptional this past quarter, thanks in large part to sales over seas. Specifically, Apple noted that iPhone sales in Japan doubled year over year. Even more impressive were the results from China where iPhone sales increased five fold, thanks mostly to the fact that the iPhone 4S didn’t debut until January 2012 there. Also, the iPhone arrived on China Telecom this past quarter, adding a few hundred thousand more eligible iPhone customers.

Availability wise, the iPhone 4S is now available on 230 carriers across 100 countries worldwide. It’s sure come a long way in just a few years when it was an AT&T exclusive.

Things are a bit bleaker for the iPod, but that, to a certain extent is to be expected given that the iPod is now almost 10 years old and peaked quite a while ago. Year over year, iPod sales declined from 9 million units during Q2 2011 to 7.7 million units during the March 2012 quarter. Still, the iPod remains the best selling MP3 player in the world with a 70+% marketshare. As expected, the iPod Touch accounts for more than 50% of all iPods sold.

To date, Apple announced that they’ve sold more than 365 million cumulative iOS devices worldwide, with 50 million of those coming in the March quarter.

iTunes Store

The iTunes Store did remarkably well this past quarter, generating $1.9 billion in revenue, up 35% from the same quarter a year-ago. The iTunes Store now boasts over 28 million songs and 45,000 movies. With respect to apps, there are now over 600,000 apps in total, with 200,000 designed specifically for the iPad.

Apple Retail Stores

Apple’s retail stores continue to rake in money hand over fist. Year over year sales are up 38% with quarterly revenue checking in at $4.4 billion. There are now 363 Apple Stores with approximately 1/3 of them located outside of the US. And always interesting is that about half of all Mac sales at Apple retail stores were to customers who had previously never owned a Mac. The halo effect is in full effect. Year over year average revenue per store grew 23%, from $9.9 million in last year’s quarter to $12.2 million in the recent March quarter. Foot traffic was also up, from 71 million visitors in Q2 2011 to 85 million in Q2 2012.

Cash

Apple’s cash now totals $110 billion, representing an increase of $12.6 billion from Q1 2012. Note, however, that $74 billion of that cash resides outside of the United States. Also note that the $110 billion cash figure will start decreasing a tad, or at least experience a slowdown in growth, once Apple starts paying a dividend after the July quarter.

iCloud

Over 125 million iCloud users