Apple was able to sell more iPads than what analysts predicted but underperformed their expectations when it came to iPhone sales, VentureBeat reported. The tech giant reported that it sold 26 million iPads and 51 million iPhones in its first quarterly earnings for this year. This compared with last year's 22.9 million iPads and 47.8 million iPhones sold.
Apple posted profits of $13.1 billion on revenues of $57.6 billion. This was the same profit seen last year but was a bit higher than that quarter which only had revenue of $54.5 billion, the report said.
Analysts have been looking closing to Apple's iPad sales this quarter which included the holiday season for 2013. Apple had seen its iPad sales plunge for the third quarter in a row last year due to competition coming from Android tablets. Analysts, however, had forecasted that Apple would be able to sell about 24.8 million iPads this year based on the predictions compiled by Fortune's Philip Elmer-Dewitt. The rosy forecast, which Apple ultimately beat, was due to the roll out of the new Retina iPad Mini and the ultralight Apple Air, the report said.
For the first time, Apple offered two new iPhone models in the holidays last quarter. Analysts had predicted that Apple would 54.8 million iPhones. However, the tech giant fell 3.8 million short of expectations, the report said.
Because of the news, Apple's stock has already suffered. While it closed at $551.19, it had dropped 5.2% in after-hours trading and a much larger drop is seen after the company will have their earnings call later in the day, the report said.
In the end, it looked like the inability of the company to meet the demand for iPhone 5S prevented sales from reaching expectations. Citing an interview that Apple Chief Financial Officer Peter Oppenheimer had with The Wall Street Journal, the report quoted Oppenheimer who said that as far as the iPhone 5S is concerned, it "sold better than we expected, but we were not able to come into a supply-demand balance until the end of the quarter."
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