Apple's Smash Hit Quarter Is a Sign of the Times

It's important to remember that Apple's big quarter was a holiday quarter and that it's the company's annual spike.

That said:

All I can say is wow. The smart guys like Horace Dediu had the numbers in the right ball park, but still, it's astonishing to see them spelled out in the cold light of reality.

The company sold a shade about 69.37 million computers in that quarter alone. Only 5.3 million of them carry the Macintosh branding, but iPhones (every smartphone, really), iPod Touches, and iPads are all computing devices. Apple sold a shade under 70 million of them in three months. The company sold more iPads than HP sold laptops and desktops, for crying out loud.

Another wow moment was when Tim Cook announced that tablets overtook desktop PCs in the US. I know desktops have been in decline for a while, but tablets basically weren't a thing before January 2010. In less than two years, this new form factor overtook the trusty old desktop computer for a quarter. That's crazy! I'm sure that desktops will overtake tablets again for a couple of quarters without all the extra holiday purchases, but it will be a temporary shift.

Apple has reason to trumpet the fact that tablets passed up desktops, as the iPad is far and away the market leader there. The Kindle Fire will probably make a decent dent if the next revision is better, and Windows 8 tablets probably will too depending on how the counting is done. For now though, "iPad" is synonymous with "tablet computing" in the same way that "iPod" was for digital music players.

Big changes are afoot. Yes, this was just a holiday quarter where iDevices made for popular gifts. However, look at the company's cash trend line. It's right where you expect it to be for exponential growth. Each year, Apple sells more iPhones than all the previous years of iPhone sales combined. The iPad is selling better now than the iPhone did at the same point of its life cycle.

This wasn't a fluke. The company's growth over the past few years was not a fluke. Apple is disrupting lots of technologies right now, and vertically integrated firms have an advantage when it comes to innovation. As long as the company remains unafraid to disrupt itself, the streak can continue.

The overarching trend in consumer computing right now is towards light, mobile, and user friendly devices. The world can pry the keyboard and mouse out of my cold, dead fingers, but the number of people who are with me on that is shrinking.