Apple issues record profits despite rivals’ sniping

Apple posted its highest ever quarterly earnings yesterday afternoon, with net profit up by a staggering 78 per cent at $3.25bn as more and more customers exposed to the iPhone and iPad decide it's time to get a Mac computer too. "There is a virtuous circle going on with Apple, as customers who are exposed to the iPhone and iPad also want a Mac," said Colin Gillis of brokers BGC Partners

CEO Steve Jobs called it a "phenomenal quarter" while an analyst at Kaufman Brios, Shaw Wu, said the results were "spectacular". Apple now predicts that revenues in the current quarter could hit $18bn, higher than forecast.

But there is at least one fly in the ointment. Apple's attempt last week to quash stories about the reception problems with the iPhone 4 seems only to have served to infuriate all its competitors.

When Jobs announced that he was offering a free phone case to every iPhone 4 user, in a speedy solution to the antenna problem, he said: "We're not perfect – and phones aren't perfect either."

If only he had stopped there.

Instead he went on to say that the iPhone 4 was "the best smartphone in the world, and there is no Antennagate" - and then proceeded to reveal "evidence" that smartphones made by three rival manufacturers – RIM's Blackberry Bold, HTC's Droid Eris and Samsung's Omnia II - also lost signal strength when they were gripped firmly.

Since when a string of furious chief executives at rival firms have come back at Jobs.

Taiwan-based manufacturer HTC's Hui-Meng Cheng told the Wall Street Journal: "The reception problems are certainly not common among smartphones. [Apple] apparently didn't give operators enough time to test the phone."

And Motorola's Sanjay Jha told the paper that tests conducted by their engineers show that the iPhone 4 suffers from more serious 'attenuation' than its rivals.
 
Over the weekend, RIM's Mike Lazaridis and Jim Balsille issued a statement: "Apple's attempt to draw RIM into Apple's self-made debacle is unacceptable. Apple's claims about RIM products appear to be deliberate attempts to distort the public's understanding of an antenna design issue and to deflect attention from Apple's difficult situation."
 
But it's Nokia's response which seems particularly pointed. "We prioritise antenna performance over physical design if they are ever in conflict," said the company - the implication being that Apple does not. ·