Apple disappoints a high-shooting Wall Street, breaks records nonetheless

Apple set new records for iPhone, iPad and Mac sales during its fiscal Q4, but still sent shares falling on Wall Street. It expects December iPhone sales to break new records, and "sky's the limit" growth in China.

Apple set an all-time quarterly record for Mac and iPad sales, as well as a new September-quarter record for iPhone sales, Apple CFO Peter Oppenheimer said during an Oct. 18 call, announcing fiscal fourth-quarter 2011 results. Driven by Mac, iPad and iPhone sales — which "blew past historical records" for the year total, said Oppenheimer — quarterly revenue was $28.3 billion, representing 39% year-over-year growth.

And still Apple managed to disappoint Wall Street.

Apple sold 17.1 million iPhones during the quarter — a 21% increase, despite sales slowed by patient consumers holding off for iPhone 5 handsets. But Wall Street had estimated the figure closer to 19 million, with J.P. Morgan at 20.6 million, causing Apple's shares to fall for the first time in more than six years.

As for the iPhone 4S, which arrived instead of that awaited iPhone 5, CEO Tim Cook reminded listeners that more than 4 million had sold in its first three days, compared to the 1.7 million iPhone 4 units that sold in the same amount of time. (Unfiltered: Sprint iPhone 4S sales break company sales records. Phew.)

"That's the mother of all uplifts," said Cook, who expects to set another iPhone sales record during the December quarter.

Other notable announced figures:

-- Apple sold 11.12 million iPads during quarter, for a 166% increase over the year-ago quarter.

-- Apple sold 6.6 million iPods, down from 9.1 million a year ago, with the iPod touch accounting for more than half.

-- Apple has facilitated the download of more than 180 million e-books.

-- More than 6 million people downloaded the Lion OS.

-- Asia accounted for 61% of Mac sales and China contributed $4.5 billion to Apple's quarterly revenue — a growth of 270% over a year ago.

Cook noted that due to flooding from monsoons in Thailand, the industry is likely to experience a shortage of disk drives, which Apple is still unsure of the effects of. He was more tight-lipped about what Apple hopes to achieve through lawsuits filed against Samsung and other Android providers.

"We spend a lot of time and money and resource in coming up with incredible innovations, and we don't like it when someone else takes those. And so that's why unfortunately, we've been pushed into the court system as a remedy to that."

What sort of remedy he had in mind, Cook said he particularly didn't want to comment on.

He was somewhat more voluble about the unlikelihood of the Amazon Fire — which one analyst described as trying to "make the tablet market more of a soap box — to take market share from the iPad.

"I think when you really assess this thing and look at iOS 5, iCloud, the ecosystem with iTunes and the App Store and books and movies and the fact that we have over 140,000 native apps for iPad versus a number in the hundreds for the other guys," said Cook, "I feel very, very confident about our ability to compete and extremely confident in our product pipeline."

But the topic Cook really warmed to was China, Apple's fastest-growing region by far. China contributed $13 billion to Apple's revenue for the year and is still growing at a "feverish pace," said Cook.

"Certainly in my lifetime, I've never seen a country with as many people rising into the middle class that aspire to buy products that Apple makes. And so I think it's an area of enormous opportunity ... and we're obviously placing additional investment," expanded Cook.

Russia, the Middle East and Brazil also show promise. But in China, he added, "the sky is the limit."