Apple reported its financial results for its 2012 second quarter yesterday afternoon. Once again their results were stellar overall – and helped by some big iPad numbers. They sold 11.8 million iPads during the quarter – a 151% increase over the same quarter last year.
The New York Times Technology section has a piece up today where Apple’s CEO Tim Cook has a quote that offers perspective on the iPad’s sales and stunning success:
“Just two years after we shipped the initial iPad, we sold 67 million,” he said. “It took us 24 years to sell that many Macs, and five years for that many iPods, and over three years for that many iPhones.”
Wow. Considering that both the iPod and the iPhone have both been massive consumer hits, that is one hell of an impressive bit of perspective. Here’s a little of what the NYT has to say on this:
That illustrates just how fast the tablet market is growing. Mr. Cook had previously said that he believed the tablet market would eventually be bigger than the PC market. Apple has had the luxury of having no serious competition in the tablet category. (It faces competition from Amazon, Barnes & Noble and Sony in the subsegment of people who want to use the device primarily to read e-books.)
And here’s quite an interesting quote from Tim Cook in the Apple press release on the Q2 results:
“The new iPad is off to a great start, and across the year you’re going to see a lot more of the kind of innovation that only Apple can deliver.”
The innovation part could be referring to just about anything from Apple, but I think it’s notable that it is mentioned in the same sentence as the new iPad, in particular. Maybe, just maybe, a hint at an expansion of the iPad line?
