Apple unit sales: The details

Macworld - Apple Computer Inc. on Wednesday posted a $44 million profit for its fourth financial quarter, which ended on September 27, 2003. It's a rosy report for a company that reported higher earnings than some analysts expected, especially compared to a net loss of $45 million for the same quarter a year ago. On what systems did Apple make money? Here's a look at the company's summary data for the quarter, where Apple pulled in $1.715 billion in revenue.

Apple's introduction of the Power Mac G5 -- and its price drop for the Power Mac G4, which remains in production -- both added up to strong unit sales for the quarter. Apple moved 221,000 Power Mac units for Q4 '03, a 66% unit increase sequentially and a 26% improvement year over year. Power Macs also made up the largest single segment of Apple's revenue for the quarter -- $419 million of $1.2 billion in revenue related to CPU sales.

With refreshed PowerBook G4s across the line, including the long-awaited update to Apple's popular 15-inch PowerBook G4 model, the company saw 9% sequential growth and 203% year over year growth in PowerBook sales, totally 176,000 units for the quarter and $348 million in revenue.

With so much emphasis on Apple's professional products, iBooks and iMacs suffered for the quarter, both sequentially and year over year. Apple moved 253,000 iMacs and 137,000 iBooks for the quarter -- down 12% and 28% respectively compared to the previous quarter, and down 20% and 25% respectively for the same quarter a year ago. iMac sales total $279 million in quarterly revenue; iBooks came in with about $154 million added to Apple's coffers.

Q4 '03 was the iPod's strongest showing yet, with 336,000 units sold, totally about $121 million in revenue. That's 11% better than the previous quarter, and 140% better than the same quarter a year ago.

Peripherals and other hardware totalled $217 million in revenue for the quarter, up 25% compared to the June quarter and 13% compared to Q4 '02. Software sales also showed a modest gain with $177 million in revenue, up 7% sequentially and 13% year over year.

Overall, the Americas remain Apple's single biggest geographical region. The region was responsible for snatching up 453,000 of the 787,000 units Apple sold worldwide, equalling about $928 million in revenue. While the number of units sold was flat sequentially and down 3% year over year, Apple saw a 12% increase in sequential revenue and a 6% improvement year over year, which means that Apple