Apple Inc. reported a net income of $4.31 billion, or $4.64 a share, for its fourth quarter, a major boost from $2.53 billion or $2.77 a year earlier.
The earnings beat the Wall Street estimates, which said the technology giant would earn about $4.03 a share for the quarter ending Sept. 30. Apple saw its revenue surging 67 percent to $20.3 billion, up from $12.2 billion a year earlier.
The major disappointment was the news that Apple failed to meet the industry estimates of selling 5 million iPad devices as the company was able to sell only 4.2 million of the devices in the quarter ending Sept. 30. Apple sold up to 3.3 million of iPad devices in the previous quarter despite the fact that it was introduced halfway through that period. The lower than expected iPad sales caused a dent of around 6 percent in the company shares in after-hours trading; the slump came after a pre-earnings rally of 10 percent.
The company sold around 14.1 million iPhones in the fourth quarter, which was 91 percent higher than the year-ago quarter, and resulted in a profit surge.
Apple Chief Executive Officer Steve Jobs earlier said in conference call that his company products were far better than those produced by Google Inc. He lashed out at Google's Android software saying customers would be disappointed by running it on smaller tablets.
Jobs, who is known for his aggressive business strategies, is facing stiff competition from Google as the latter is planning a barrage of products and software that could seriously undercut Apple sales.
