In times of crisis, Apple always maintains its form

Apple is not always in step with the mood. The words "recession", "crunch", "downturn" are all alien to the firm from Cupertino. The publication of its latest financial figures confirm, above and beyond its own forecasts, that Apple is going great guns.

The management at Apple is delighted. Especially as the competition is suffering in a depressed market. One week after the announcement of the success of the AppStore (1.5 billion downloads and 65,000 apps available), a worry for the competition, Steve Jobs, not present in person at the press conference but who contributed a written statement, tells us: "we manufacture the most innovative products in our history, and our customers are responding".

Turnover is up 12% and net profits at 1.23 bn USD

While specialists speak of a downturn in the computer market for 2009 of around 5%, Apple has announced sales of the Mac up 4% on last year.

A real societal phenomenon, the iPhone has not only revived a sleeping market that has been too focussed on improving hardware over ease of use, it has also become a product apart, combining the phone, pocket computer and video games console in one. 5.2 million iPhones were sold between April and June (as against 710,000 last year).

This success has been accompanied by a predictable fall in sales of the iPod (down 7% in the second quarter, which is to be expected as it is competing with the iPhone and the iPod Touch). The iPod Touch has had a particularly strong effect on iPod sales but this doesn't seem to be of concern at Apple who are expecting this trend to continue over the next quarter.

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