Apple's annual SEC 10K filing showed that music-related sales increased by US$844 million (or 34%) to $3.34 billion in fiscal 2008, up from US$2.5 billion in 2007. Apple cited "heightened consumer interest in downloading third-party digital content" as the reason for the hefty increase.

Apple noted increased net sales from the iTunes Store in each of its geographic regions. An increase in the amount and types of content available at the iTunes stores was pegged as part of this growth.

Apple is the largest U.S. music seller, having knocked Wal-mart from the #1 spot in April of 2008. The revenue figures for the music-related business do not include iPod or iPhone sales.

[via eWeek Apple Watch]

Just a reminder: Apple will hold their fourth quarter financial conference call tomorrow, October 21st at 2PM Pacific time. We'll be live blogging the call, so be sure to check back for our up-to-the-minute report and analysis.

What should we expect? According to estimates from research firm NPD, it's good news, especially regarding Mac sales. Piper Jaffray analysts suggest, after examining the NPD data, that Mac sales grew by 25% - 29% in the fourth quarter. That's 25% yearly growth and represents nearly 2.8 million Macs.

It has also been suggested that iPod sales numbers will be slightly better than Wall Street projections. We'll know soon enough.

Earlier this week, Apple announced that their fourth quarter financial conference call will take place on October 21st. The live audio stream will begin at 2PM Pacific time.

We'll be liveblogging the call, so check back on the 21st for up-to-the-second information and analysis. Apple's stock took a significant dive last month, as did the rest of the market. Still, Apple's overall market share continues to be strong, and retail stores continue to open across the globe. It will be an interesting report.

[Via MacNN]

This liveblog will be relaying and discussing Apple's Q3 financial results. Apple's third fiscal quarter encompassed sales between April 1, 2008 and June 30, 2008. Apple reported a record-breaking quarter, with revenue up 38% year over year and Mac sales at an all time high!

You can listen in live here. Please join me in the blog to discuss the results, speculate

Here's a reminder to our readers. Apple will announce the financial results of 2008's third quarter at the end of the day today, approximately 4:30pm EDT.

Shortly thereafter (approximately 5:00 PM EDT), Apple will hold a live conference call to discuss the announcement. We'll be live blogging that call right here, so be sure and check it out. Also, you can follow along with Apple's live audio stream here.

Dust off your portfolios, stockholders! It's time to see what you've bought yourselves.

With all the current hype surrounding the imminent release of both the upgrade to Apple's .Mac service, now to be forever known as MobileMe, and Friday's launch of the new, improved iPhone version 2.0, let's not forget that Apple also makes other types of hardware that seems to be selling pretty well these days. In fact, according to a recent article up over at AppleInsider, Apple is apparently poised to ship 2.5 Million Macs in the Spring -- thanks, in some measure, to the poor reception of Microsoft's Windows Vista.

According to BMO Capital Markets analyst Keith Bachman, Apple's potentially strong quarter, which ends in June, can be attributed to several factors. Among them, user dissatisfaction with Vista. "Thus far, user satisfaction ratings for Vista have been weak, and startup times for Vista have been known to be much slower than the Mac OS X," Bachman said in the article. "Thus, more than 50% of recent customers buying Macs in Apple retail stores are first-time buyers."

In addition, the analyst added that this problem could help Apple's bottom line well into 2009 and could potentially improve the company's current world market share, raising it to 3.9% or higher. This is good news for those of us who remember the time, not so long ago, when most in the press and analysts like Bachman predicted Apple's certain demise. Still, even with this good news, we still need to hope Apple doesn't do something to hurt itself -- like bungle the .Mac to MobileMe transition or run out of shiny new iPhones at 8:30AM on Friday. That would not be a good thing.

Apple will be reporting its 2008 Q1 financial results today at 5 PM EST. After yesterday's worldwide market plunge (U.S. exchanges were closed for Martin Luther King, Jr. Day), Apple shares dropped as much as 8% as the markets opened this morning. Though the stock has largely rebounded (thanks to the Federal Reserve's surprise emergency cuts in lending rates), this will certainly make for an interesting backdrop for today's earnings call.

We'll be live-blogging the call (it is streaming live via QuickTime here) and trying out the CoverItLive service to see how it performs.

Join us back here at 5 PM EST for all the action.

You can't rush excellence, but sometimes you can speed it up just a smidge. Apple reports that it sold iPhone #1 million on September 9th, just 74 days after the product introduction (and 4 days after the price drop). As Steve notes in the press release, it was two years before the iPod reached the million mark.

Apple COO Tim Cook announced Apple's forecast of 1 million phones sold by "September, 2007" earlier this summer, and that's what Apple has done. If my personal experience is indicative if the phone's popularity - people still stop me in my tracks so they can see it - this should be a very good holiday season for Apple.

Thanks, Tim!

Well, it looks like the stock options issue that has been pestering Apple for months now may be over. AppleInsider is reporting today that Apple's CFO Fred Anderson has settled with the Securities and Exchange Commission to the tune of three and a half million bucks. Mr. Anderson denies any wrongdoing in the settlement.

Ok, now that all of this is (probably) over, let's re-focus on Leopard, shall we?

Apple made a big leap in their Fortune 500 ranking for 2006 when the list was released earlier this week. Previously, they were at number 159. Now, they've jumped 38 spots to number 121. By the end of March 2007 the company's market value was 80.602 billion dollars (put your pinky to the corner of your mouth when you say that).

Other tech companies in the top 20 included HP (number 14) and Verizon (number 13). The number one spot went to the monolithic Wal-Mart.

[Via MacDailyNews]

With the Macworld keynote still on the horizon, the last thing Apple needs is a few more lawsuits and federal investigations.

The San Francisco Chronicle reports that Apple faces a new shareholder lawsuit along with twin investigations by the San Francisco's US Attorney's office and by the Securities and Exchange Commission. Apple's internal investigation, led by movie star, former Veep and all around green guy Al Gore, cleared Steve Jobs and his executive team. Apparently the lawsuit names about a dozen complaints including backdating stock options and "spring loading", where options are granted in advance of releasing news likely to drive up prices. The bottom line is that this controversy looks like it will be around for a while longer. Is there a "there" there? It's hard to tell. We're not lawyers and this whole thing looks like it rests on lots of technicalities.

BusinessWeek reports that Apple has cleared both Apple management and CEO Steve Jobs himself of any wrongdoing after concluding its internal probe about backdated stock options.

"The special committee, its independent counsel and forensic accountants have performed an exhaustive investigation of Apple's stock option granting practices," said Al Gore, former VP of the United States and chair of the special committee, and Jerome York, chair of Apple's Audit and Finance Committee. "The board of directors is confident that the Company has corrected the problems that led to the restatement, and it has complete confidence in Steve Jobs and the senior management team."

As Scott posted earlier today, Apple has finally filed its SEC forms 10-Q and 10-K for the 2006 fiscal year.

So what does this mean to the Apple user community at large? Probably nothing much. Jobs' hiring of personal counsel looks like simple business-as-usual.

It seems that the geeks like you and me aren't the only ones excited about Apple's release of Boot Camp. This morning, Wall Street demonstrated a bit of support, too, as Apple stock rose 8% in early trading. True, it's just the beginning of the day, but we'll see what happens.

I'm going to guess that, when this is built into the OS, it means increased Mac sales. This year's World Wide Developer's Conference should be a good one.

We don't get to watch the Macworld keynote live anymore, buy you can still watch the quarterly conference call. Apple will webcast this report today at 2pm PT (5pm EST) here. We know that things are going well, based on what Steve said at Macworld earlier this month, but it's still fun to hear those enormous numbers.

[Via MacDailyNews]