Apple announced early this morning that there are now over 100,000 apps available to iPhone and iPod touch users in the the App Store. Customers of the App Store have purchased over two billion apps, and it is the world's most popular applications store.

In this morning's press release, Apple senior vice president for Worldwide Marketing Phil Schiller noted that "The App Store, now with over 100,000 applications available, is clearly a major differentiator for millions of iPhone and iPod touch customers around the world."

Schiller's statement was echoed by top executives from EA Mobile and Smule. EA Mobile's Travis Boatman, VP of Worldwide Studios, praised the App Store as an innovative marketplace to over 50 million iPhone and iPod touch owners, while Smule's CEO Jeff Smith took the perspective of a small, new development house that has skyrocketed to success. "With 10,000 downloads a day, worldwide customer response to our I Am T-Pain App has exceeded our wildest expectations," said Smith. "The App Store has given us a unique opportunity to create and grow a very successful business, and we're looking forward to an exciting future.

By comparison, the Google Android Market had just over 10,000 apps as of early September, almost 65% of which were free. An analysis of iPhone and Android app purchases shows that iPhone users are more likely to purchase apps, while users of Android-based smartphones appear to like getting their software for free. Developers for the most part will go where the money is, and at this time, that appears to be the App Store.

[via Engadget]

Steve Jobs' Disney stocks aren't the only thing making him rich -- AAPL has hit an all time high, according to MacRumors, thanks to the big announcements earlier this week, both on the online store and during the conference call. Before opening this morning, it was at 204.72, but the high yesterday was a whopping 208.71, the best the company's ever seen, beating the previous high of 199.83, set in December of 2007. And it's been a heck of a year: the stock was trading in the mid 80s this past January, though that may have been more of a sign of the economy at large than Apple's fortunes specifically.

Boy, it would have been nice to buy back then, wouldn't it have? $5,000 of Apple's shares in January would be worth $13,000 yesterday. Just goes to show you can't keep a good fruit down.

You can track all the AAPL financial news on our sister sites Blogging Stocks and Daily Finance.

Is it better to have a lot of something good or a little of something great? If Apple CEO Steve Jobs is any indication, it's better to have both.

In September, Alpha Steve had an estimated personal net worth of $5.1 billion, enough to end up the 43rd richest person in the U.S. according to Forbes' list of the 400 richest people in the states. This week he's up to at least $5.4 billion. If you think that's because of the tear on which Apple's stock has gone over the past few weeks, you're only a little over half right.

According to filings by Apple (AAPL), Jobs owns 5.426 million shares of Apple stock. As of Tuesday night, Apple's stock had picked up 26.39 points since Forbes' counted the 400 "haves." Jobs shares had gained $146 million in value. Not bad.

Disney (DIS) filings say Jobs owns 138 million shares of the happiest company on Earth. Those shares have not had nearly the run enjoyed by Apple shares over the last few weeks, gaining only 99 cents as of Tuesday night. Still, Jobs has so many of them that they've increased in value by $136 million. Not bad either.

Apple's meteoric rise plus Disney's incremental rise equals $282 million more for Apple's CEO and Disney's largest private shareholder.

It's better to have both.

[via Fortune]

Apple's earnings report came out just a few minutes ago, and the conference call is coming right up! Join us for the liveblog below as we follow along through the conference call.

Apple has just released the fourth quarter earnings report for fiscal year 2009. The report can be read here and will be discussed in detail on the upcoming earnings call with Wall Street analysts.

The big news? Apple once again beat the Street with $1.82 EPS against an expectation of $1.65 EPS! More good news will be coming soon.

Also big news:
"Apple sold 3.05 million Macintosh® computers during the quarter, representing a 17 percent unit increase over the year-ago quarter. The Company sold 10.2 million iPods during the quarter, representing an eight percent unit decline from the year-ago quarter. Apple sold 7.4 million iPhones in the quarter, representing seven percent unit growth over the year-ago quarter. "

Be sure to join in on our liveblog of the call, coming up at about 4:50 PM EDT today.

Time flies when you're having fun -- it seems like it was only a few weeks ago that we were enjoying the Q3 earnings report from Apple, Inc.

Well, today the wizards of Cupertino are on the phone again with top Wall Street analysts to report how the company did during the fourth quarter (July - September, 2009). Many analysts are expecting Apple to continue its recession-defying high wire act, with an analyst poll by Thomson Reuters Financial showing an earnings forecast of US$1.42 per share. That's 13 percent over the same quarter a year ago, and higher than Apple's own forecast of US$1.18 - US$1.23 per share.

As usual, we'll be covering the earnings call via CoverItLive. Drop by TUAW at approximately 5 PM EDT (2 PM PDT) and join us. Bring your questions, and we'll supply the news and commentary.

Amidst the ongoing macroeconomic malaise (is it over yet? Can we come out from under the covers?), the PC industry's sales have been suffering as big corporations and cash-strapped consumers postpone those discretionary purchases of shiny new gear. The expectation, based on 2008's results, was that this quarter would be tough sledding.

Results from analysts Gartner and IDC, however, both show an uptick in unit sales across the PC market year-over-year (2.3% higher globally per IDC, 0.5% higher per Gartner). Any pickup in sales comes as a surprise to Gartner, which had predicted a 5.6% decline in unit shipments.

For Apple specifically, the news is also good: both firms predict a boost in unit sales and share percentage for Apple's CPU shipments, with US numbers up from 8.6% to 8.8% share (Gartner) or a blazing 9.4% share (IDC). For the unvarnished results, you can tune in this coming Monday, 10/19 at 2pm PT to hear Apple's quarterly earnings call.

[via BrainstormTech]

The iPhone is selling well in Australia. Research firm IDC reports that the iPhone has taken 21% of the Australian smartphone market share in the past 12 months, putting Apple in 2nd place behind Nokia and just ahead of Blackberry.

What's most interesting here is how the iPhone has increased overall smartphone shipments to Australia. Specifically, other manufacturers have had to keep up with customer demands for features similar to the iPhone's, and as a result customer interest and overall smartphone sales have "...intensified of the past couple of years," said IDC telecommunications analyst Mark Novosel. He expects Australia's smartphone market to grow steadily over the next five years.

Australia's first Apple retail store opened in July of 2008, and the iPhone was released shortly thereafter.

[Via MacDailyNews]

Chris Foresman over at Ars Technica has an interesting pronouncement: A rule governed by the Financial Accounting Standards Board, that's been heavily lobbied for by Apple and other electronics companies, may be enough to lift the charge that iPod touch owners have had to pay for updates of significant features to their devices. It's complicated, but it all has to do with "subscription accounting" -- devices that gain "significant new functionality" after their sale, like the iPhone, have to be reported over a series of years rather than all at the same time (presumably because the revenues associated with the product were the result of a series of updates, not just one lump sum).

For the iPhone, it's fine -- they have subscription charges associated with them over two years anyway. But the iPod touch is different -- because Apple doesn't want to report the sales of those devices over a period of time, they've had to charge minimum fees for updates -- the $10 (and more recently, $5) that iPod touch owners have paid for the firmware updates. But if the new rule goes in (it still requires FASB approval), then Apple would be able to report sales of the iPod touch all together without having to worry about charging for updates, as well as the dual GAAP and non-GAAP reporting we've heard on their conference calls.

Plus, as Foresman says, it would help Apple's stock price (seeing all of the iPhone's sales at once would boost investor confidence), and it would help developers who are asking all users of both the iPhone and iPod touch to update right away -- they wouldn't have to wait for iPod touch owners to find a few bucks in their couch. With the weight of Apple behind this one, we can probably expect to see the rule approved (even if they have to make some concessions). And so while iPod touch owners will probably have to still keep waiting for a camera, they at least won't have to pay for more software updates.

Piper Jaffray senior research analyst Gene Munster, who is not pictured at right, is continuing his love affair with all things AAPL. In the last few weeks he's told us that the iPhone will be picked up by another U.S. carrier in 2010, that Steve Jobs will be on hand at the September 9th Apple music event, and that there would be an AppleTV announcement at the event (this was quashed by Jim Dalrymple at The Loop).

Now the Munster-man is back with even more good news. He believes now that manufacturing capacity for the iPhone 3GS has ramped up and supply is adequate, Apple is on track to sell 7 million iPhones during the quarter ending September 30th.

According to Munster, tight supplies of the 3GS at launch led AT&T store managers to recommend the less pricey 3G to customers. Now that supplies are adequate, store managers are recommending the 3GS, which remains the best selling device at AT&T outlets. Piper Jaffray's figures indicate that during August, the iPhone took share from BlackBerry, the Nokia E71x, and other competitors.

Munster's last prediction isn't so rosy, but is based on historical precedent -- he expects Apple's stock price to dip after tomorrow's event by about 1 percent.

[via AppleInsider]

Apple's quarterly earnings aren't the only bits of good news going around: according to Betanews, the market research firm NPD has found that Apple's revenue market share in the premium price segment (computers costing $1000 or more) is 91 percent, up from 88 percent in May.

Not only is this good news for Apple, it is a continuation of a positive trend: their premium revenue share is way up from the first quarter of 2008, when their cut was about 66 percent. However, most original equipment manufacturers and Microsoft prefer to measure success by unit market share, or how many individual computers were moved regardless of price. Gartner and IDC place the unit market share of PCs running some version of Microsoft Windows at 90 percent, while Macs have 8.7 percent.

Breaking down the numbers, this news isn't too surprising. According to NPD, the average selling price of a computer sold at retail in June was $701. Splitting this figure into Macs and PCs gives an ASP of $515 for any Windows PC sold. A Mac, on the other hand, has an ASP of a whopping $1400.

Considering that Apple chooses not to wage the netbook price war and that the bulk of PCs purchased cost less than $1000, it makes sense that Apple would control the premium segment. They were also able to boost their sales figures in this bracket by lowering the high-end prices $100 or more on each model while keeping all but one computer in the $1000+ segment. But hey, we'll take good news however we have to slice it, right?

[via The Loop]

In yesterday's earnings announcement and subsequent analysts' call, Apple reported another record-breaking quarter; the company posted its "best non-holiday quarter [in terms of] revenue and earnings." This is pretty impressive given, as Engadget points out, what some consider the "worst recession since the Great Depression." Specifically, Apple's books (not that kind) are reporting revenues of $8.34 billion with a take-away profit of $1.3 billion; the bump from the year-ago quarter in earnings per diluted share takes us from $1.19/share in Q3'08 to $1.35 in Q3'09.

In the midst of these impressive numbers, Apple's CFO Peter Oppenheimer is optimistic. Apple is expecting revenue in the range of $8.7 billion to $8.9 billion for the current quarter, forecasting an increase in Mac sales as we enter the back-to-school shopping season. This is a safe bet, given Apple's "best ever" line of current MacBooks. For Q3'09 Apple sold 2.6 million Macs -- 1.75M of them were laptops, per Macworld -- representing a 4% increase in units sold over the year-ago quarter. The laptop rush continues to swing the balance of Apple's CPU sales towards the MacBook Pro line; laptop units sold jumped 13% year over year, while desktop sales dropped almost 100K units (849K vs. 943K) against Q3'09.

Ignoring the subscription-based accounting methodologies for both iPhone and Apple TV, Apple's non-GAAP revenue was a staggering $9.74 billion with net income of $1.94 billion. In order to allow for future free updates to the products, Apple uses subscription based accounting for iPhone and Apple TV; revenue from iPod touch & iPod, Macs, software and accessories is fully recognized when the products are sold. This approach "parcels out income from iPhone and Apple TV sales over a 24-month period."

Apple also sold 10.2 million iPods and 5.2 million iPhones, representing a 7% decline and 626% increase over the year-ago quarter. This fact is significant because the decrease in iPod sales indicates that the iPhone is now cannibalizing its older siblings in the "traditional" (shuffle, nano, and classic) family of iPods. Apple is also quick to point out that the entire market for traditional MP3 players is declining.

While the increase in iPhone sales does seem quite impressive, it is worth noting that the iPhone is available in many more countries than it was a year ago (although the 3GS is only in 18 of the 80 markets so far). I would be interested in knowing if iPhone sales increased domestically or if these numbers are completely driven by international success. Another interesting metric will be to compare iPhone sales this quarter to sales in Q3'10. With a similar sampling of countries the numbers should make for a better comparison. Although, I will go ahead and jump the rumor-gun and say I think that next year's iPhone is going to be a bigger improvement vs. the current model, as compared to the 3GS vs. the 3G; for this reason iPhone sales will continue to increase.

Again the question of netbooks was presented and again Apple suggests that the netbook is currently a sub-standard computing platform with a poor user experience. If we consider that Apple had at one time said they were not doing a video iPod, then it is pretty likely that an Apple netbook is in our future.

Apple's third-quarter results are very strong and the stock is up substantially in early trading today. This should be great news for anyone holding any AAPL in their portfolio especially given the close for Q2'09 was a mere $121.51. I think Apple is doing a great job and as an investor myself, I am pleased with the results -- as is the rest of Wall Street.

Apple's earnings report came out just a few minutes ago, and the conference call is coming right up! Join us for the liveblog below as we follow along through the conference call.

For the quarter just completed, Apple reported 8.34 billion dollars in revenue, and earnings of $1.35 per share (versus the $1.17 consensus estimate). 2.6 million Macs sold, 10.2M iPods, 5.2M iPhones, 36.3% margins. Guidance for the next quarter is $1.18 to $1.23 per share (all via CNBC). "Best non-holiday quarter ever," says the company.

Full press release below. See you all back here at 2pm PT/5pm ET for our liveblog of the analyst conference call. Note that we will be listening to the call and cannot ask questions (much as we might like to!).

There's nothing quite as fun as an Apple earnings call!

Along with a lot of financial gobbledygook, disclaimers, and carefully-phrased "forward-looking statements", there are also pointed questions from top financial analysts. On occasion, Apple may even bring forth Steve Jobs to enliven the call.

Today is the day for Apple's 3rd quarter 2009 earnings call. Our very own Mike Rose will be leading the team on a liveblog of the event before rushing off to a Wednesday appearance on Fox Business News, where he holds the title of "The Unofficial Apple Analyst." You can also listen in on the festivities, as Apple will be streaming audio of the event.

The liveblog via CoverItLive will begin here on TUAW at approximately 5 PM EDT, so be sure to join us for the call.