Apple Profit Rises on Higher iPhone and iPad Sales (NYT) ; The Two-Horse Smartphone Race: Apple vs. Samsung (WSJ.com)

Apple's Q1 results are in and quarterly profit has DOUBLED to $11.6B, and they've passed Samsung as the #1 smartphone seller. But, if Samsung has sold 44M smartphones in Q1 as they have started to let leak, Apple will only wear the crown for a few days until Samsung's Q1 announcement. And try this on for size: in 2011, Samsung shipped 300 million handsets. (not smartphones) Mind boggling!!

"But Apple's single-product strategy is likely to be tested as smartphones become common, particularly in less affluent markets like India and China.

"Apple is reaching a fork in the road where it needs to decide whether it remains a high-priced player or enters the midrange mass market," said Mr. Mawston. "

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/25/technology/apple-profits-up-as-iphone-sales-grow-88.html

"Apple said it sold 35.1 million iPhones in the quarter, an 88 percent increase from the period a year ago. It sold 11.8 million iPads, more than double the number it sold in the same quarter last year.

"It was an incredible quarter in China," Timothy D. Cook, Apple's chief executive, said in a conference call with Wall Street analysts. "It is mind-boggling that we could do this well."

For the quarter that ended March 31, the company reported net income of $11.62 billion, or $12.30 a share, compared with $5.99 billion, or $6.40 a share, in the period a year earlier.

Apple's revenue was $39.19 billion, up from $24.67 billion a year ago.

Mr. Cook said that Apple's quarterly revenue from China was $7.9 billion, about 20 percent of total company revenue. Furthermore, that was triple Apple's China sales in the same period a year ago. In contrast, Apple's China sales during its last fiscal year were about 12 percent of total revenue. Two years ago, Apple sales in China were 2 percent.

"China has grown from a rounding error to a massive new market," said Robert Cihra, an analyst at Evercore Partners. "Their premium price point clearly has not been any hurdle to them growing there."

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702303978104577362140799316460.html

" Samsung's momentum is particularly striking. Analysts expect the company, relying heavily on phones run by Google Inc.'s Android software, to double the size of its smartphone shipments this year. Last year, Samsung shipped 94 million units, according to IDC, compared with Apple's 93.2 million.

Samsung, which reports earnings on Friday, is expected to show an 80% jump in net profit to around $4.4 billion, driven largely by cellphones but also boosted by strength in chips and a rebound in its TV business, the world's largest."