• BusinessWeek, Thursday, April 23, 2009 11:45 AM

Apple issued strong first quarter earnings on Wednesday, boosted by sales of the iPhone, particularly overseas, BusinessWeek reports. The consumer electronics giant sold almost 3.8 million iPhones in the quarter, more than double the number from a year earlier. Nearly half of these came from overseas, BusinessWeek notes, as AT&T on Wednesday reported 1.6 million iPhone subscription activations (AT&T is the iPhone's exclusive carrier in the U.S.). Total iPhone sales have now passed 21 million worldwide. Apple also saw strength in its iPod digital music players, selling 11 million units in the quarter, a 3% increase from a year earlier. BusinessWeek said demand was boosted by the newly revised version of the iPod shuffle.

For the quarter, the company posted earnings of $1.21 billion on revenues of $8.16 billion, easily beating Wall Street's estimates. Gross margins widened to 36.4%, beating the company's own forecast of 32.5%. Apple CFO Peter Oppenheimer said the company benefited from better-than-expected prices on memory chips, lower shipping and freight costs, and better-than-expected sales of higher-margin products like the iPod Shuffle. Once again, the company issued conservative second quarter guidance, expecting sales of $7.7 billion to $7.9 billion, compared to the Street's estimate of $8.28 billion.

The big weak spot on the company's quarter was computer sales, which declined 3% to 2.2 million units, from 2.3 million units a year earlier. Desktop sales fell 4%, while notebook sales fell 2%.

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