Apple Posts Best-Ever Quarter; $46.3B in Revenue

Apple held its Q1 2012 earnings call yesterday, and the talked-about results can be summed up with just one word: “wow”. Surpassing all analyst expectations, Apple posted $46.3 billion in revenue and $13.06 billion in profits, resulting in a year-over-year gain of 118%, a new record for the company. With these profits, Apple now has $97.6 billion in the bank – enough to buy many a country.

It’s being speculated what Apple is going to do with all this money, as it’s quite literally “too much” to do anything reasonable with. It’s not in Apple’s nature to make huge acquisitions, so the money isn’t going to disappear due to that. Stock buybacks is one option, though it could be that Apple has other plans we’re not yet aware of. However, given the rapid growth, Apple’s bank account balance is only going to grow even larger.

Here’s more food for thought. Apple’s iPhone alone is now generating more revenue than all of Microsoft. This is thanks to the incredible growth Apple has experienced in just the last year alone. Here’s a graph created by the good folks at TechCrunch that shows the growth experienced in just the past couple of years (Q1 11 in the graph should say Q1 12):

And as if even more praise had to be bestowed upon Apple, the company is now the most valuable publicly-traded company on the planet, surpassing Exxon. Will the trend continue through 2012? It sure appears so.