Key Metrics from the Quarter:

Quotes from Apple Executives:
Apple's CEO Steve Jobs stated the following:

• "We're thrilled with the growth of our Mac business, and especially that over 75 percent of the Macs sold during the quarter used Intel processors. This is the smoothest and most successful transition that any of us have ever experienced"

Apple's CFO Peter Oppenheimer stated the following:

• "We're very pleased to report the second highest quarterly sales and earnings in Apple's history, resulting in year-over-year revenue growth of 24 percent and earnings growth of 48 percent"
  

Commentary and Opinion:
Another excellent quarter for Apple as they once again shipped over one million Macintosh computers, marking the seventh straight quarter with at least one million Macs sold.  The fiscal third quarter saw the introduction of the MacBook notebook computer, Apple's replacement for the PowerPC based iBook notebook.  With only the Professional PowerMac desktop computer and the XServ servers waiting to be transistioned to Intel processors, Apple has demonstrated that the transition is clearly underway and ahead of schedule.  Once the Intel based PowerMac and XServ systems are announced, I expect Apple will see a spike in Macintosh desktop sales.

Increased Macintosh sales continue to demonstrate Apple's growing popularity and momentum.  The strong Macintosh sales lead me to believe that more consumers and businesses are purchasing their first Macs.  Combine this with the current Mac owners who are purchasing new systems to replace prior PowerPC based Mac, Apple is seeing solid demand for their computers.  I expect this trend to continue for the remainder of calender year 2006 and well into 2007 as Apple is expected to release the next verison of the Mac OS X operating system.  I expect that Apple will add a significant number of users to it's base as more consumers and business purchase Macs for the first time.  Apple's introduction of BootCamp in April 2006 is making the Mac a more appealing platform because it can legally run both Apple's OS X operating system as well as Microsoft's Windows operating system.

My view is that Apple's compelling OS X operating system, quality hardware, innovation, vision, and the ability to run Windows on Mac are driving more people to purchase Macs.

Apple's Press Release can be found here

Updates

July 20, 2006

• Corrected portable / notebook sale data for thrid quarter
  
• Added commentary about seventh straight quarter with at least one million Macs sold