Jobs comes out swinging against rivals at earnings report

An unusually combative appearance by Apple CEO Steve Jobs appeared at a recent earnings call making series of claims including 7-inch tablets being ‘DOA’.

The iPhone-maker announced record revenue surpassing $20 billion of revenue with the iPad alone contributing $5 billion to Apple coffers. However it was widely expected that the iPad would sell 5 million units and the actual sales fell short of the mark on 4.19 million. 

"We are blown away to report over $20 billion in revenue and over $4 billion in after-tax earnings-both all-time records for Apple," said Apple boss Steve Jobs in a statement. 

"iPhone sales of 14.1 million were up 91 per cent year-over-year, handily beating the 12.1 million phones RIM sold in their most recent quarter. We still have a few surprises left for the remainder of this calendar year."

Unsurprisingly the iPhone continued to be the star of the show with $8.82 billion of sales, up 92 per cent on the previous year. Next the company made $3.2 billion from notebooks but this was up just 10 per cent while the iPad came in third making $2.79 in a new addition to the Apple product range.

The desktop business, however, experienced a strong 54 per cent growth to $1.7 billion but it’s still dwarfed by the firm’s notebook business in total size. The iPod and iTunes music sales contributed $1.48 and $1.24 billion each, meaning that the iPod and music sales alone is worth more than Mac sales.

Most surprisingly in the announcement of strong results was the appearance of Steve Jobs. Continuing the combative tone the company has adopted in public statements following the iPhone 4 ‘Antennagate’, Jobs dished out criticism to rivals including calling Goggle ‘disingenuous’ over claims of the ‘open’ nature of the Android OS.

In what Engadget called "the most insane earnings call we’ve ever been on," Jobs read from an aggressively worded statement. Jobs cast doubt on Android sales, despite several market analyst firms releasing detailed reports, he also attacked Android’s ‘fragmentation’, long considered to be the Achilles’ heel of Goggle’s iOS challenger.

"Goggle wants to characterize Android as open, and iOS and the iPhone as closed. We think this is disingenuous. Unlike Windows, which has the same interface on every machine, Android is very fragmented. Compare this with iPhone, where every interface is the same."

"We think this open versus closed argument is a smokescreen that hides the real question: What’s better for users, fragmented versus integrated?" asked Jobs. "We believed integrated will trump fragmented every time."

The sheer number of remarkable claims Jobs made at the earnings call looks set to be poured over by analysts and media over the coming days but it left one thing in no doubt, Apple views Android as a serious threat worth wheeling out the biggest gun the firm has to tell the market why the firm’s iPhone is top dog among smartphones.

Engadget now has an audio log of the Jobs outburst.

Image credit: Engadget.