Apple moves 14 million iPods in three months

SAN FRANCISCO - Apple Computers said today iPods helped push holiday sales to US$5.7 billion, near the top of Wall Street estimates and sending the company's shares up more than 6 per cent.

Speaking at the company's annual Macworld conference in San Francisco, chief executive Steve Jobs said the company sold 14 million iPods from October to December 2005 and 42 million to date. He also said the company's online iTunes store has so far sold 850 million songs.

"And it still wasn't enough," Jobs said. "More iPods are on the way."

Wall Street analysts on average were expecting Apple to post revenue for the fiscal first quarter ending in December of US$5.04 billion versus US$3.49 billion a year ago, according to Reuters Estimates. Forecasts ranged from US$4.69 billion to US$5.85 billion.

The wildly popular iPod devices have quickly gained the lion's share of the digital music machine market and helped send Apple stock up 145 per cent since the start of 2005.

"Apple blew away revenue and iPod estimates," Soleil-Cross research analyst Shannon Cross said. "And if you extrapolate the numbers, they will likely beat EPS estimates as well."

Apple has also bolstered its lead with iPod versions, such as the lower-priced Nano and Shuffle. It introduced a video iPod last October along with a deal with Walt Disney to sell television shows such as "Desperate Housewives."

Dell and analysts have credited the wildly popular devices with reversing Apple's fortunes. Analysts have also said Apple's reemergence in personal computers has hurt Dell sales.

Apple's growth rate in PC sales was the highest among the top five vendors in the third quarter, although it still has only about 4 per cent of the overall PC market.

Apple also said it sold 1.25 million of its Macintosh computers during the holiday quarter when sales at its retail stores were about US$1 billion.

Apple shares were up 6.6 per cent at US$81.02 in early afternoon trading on Nasdaq.

- REUTERS