January 12, 2005: Apple stories file earnings for the previous three months. Spectacular iPod gross sales through the vacation interval, and demand for the most recent iBook laptop computer, give the corporate a four-fold improve in income.
Apple brags that it bought a complete of 10 million iPods, and rightly so. The huge recognition of the moveable music participant drives Apple to its highest earnings but.
“We’re thrilled to report the very best quarterly income and internet earnings in Apple’s historical past,” mentioned Apple CEO Steve Jobs in a press launch. “We’ve bought over 10 million iPods thus far and are kicking off the brand new 12 months with a slate of modern new merchandise together with iPod shuffle, Mac mini and iLife ’05.”
iPod gross sales energy file Apple earnings
At the moment, large earnings for Apple are nothing new. Whereas iPhone demand plateaued just a few years in the past, Apple’s providers enterprise ramped up. And rising demand for Macs through the COVID-19 pandemic helped drive Apple’s market capitalization above the $3 trillion mark in early 2022 and once more in late 2023. Apple’s market cap at the moment hovers simply above $3.5 trillion, boosted in 2024 by excessive expectations for a “golden period of progress” fueled by synthetic intelligence.
On this present day in 2005, nonetheless, Apple was nonetheless climbing. The file earnings fueled by iPod saleswowed buyers who nonetheless remembered the painfully dangerous outdated days of the Nineties.
In Apple’s January 12, 2005, earnings report, Cupertino revealed that it achieved gross sales of $3.49 billion within the earlier quarter. That amounted to an enormous 75% improve on the $2 billion it made throughout the identical interval the 12 months earlier than. Web revenue for the quarter skyrocketed to $295 million, up from $63 million for a similar quarter in 2004.
The iPod’s sturdy gross sales and phenomenal cultural influence proved key to Apple’s progress. The gadget turned as a lot of a cultural fixture of 2005 as CSI, Guitar Hero and Carrie Underwood on American Idol.
Demand for the iPod might hardly have been better, with the product line seeing a whopping 525% unit progress within the previous three months. In all, it commanded roughly 65% of the moveable music participant market.
Apple wins with iTunes and Apple Shops, too
As talked about, it wasn’t simply iPod gross sales that fueled Apple’s mid-200s increase. Whereas the iTunes music retailer pioneered a complete new approach to promote music, Apple’s on-line retailer went from energy to energy. Within the non-digital world, brick-and-mortar Apple shops continued to increase. (Apple had simply opened its first retailer outdoors the US.)
Mac gross sales additionally had been rising, due to modern merchandise just like the attractive iBook G4 (which obtained a late-2004 improve) and the highly effective iMac G5, which stomped throughout its PC rivals.
Trying again from at present’s vantage level, what’s so spectacular about Apple in 2005 was the best way the corporate managed to juggle its completely different merchandise so successfully. Positive, the iPod’s astonishing gross sales numbers had been the large focus — and the product line was about to learn from the arrival of the newly introduced iPod shuffle — however there was loads of innovation occurring elsewhere, too.
It was an thrilling time to be an Apple fan. And, though we didn’t realize it on the time, the most effective was but to return.
What do you assume was the most effective time to be an Apple fan? Is the corporate as thrilling at present because it ever was? Depart your feedback under.
