Apple's 74.5 Million iPhone Sales Provide A 'Screaming Headline,' Everything Else Is Gravy

Apple Inc. AAPL just reported another record-breaking quarter.

The company sold 74.5 million iPhones, beating or meeting all but the most extreme sales estimates. Investors reacted positively, boosting the stock more than 5 percent in after hours trading.

"The 74.5 million iPhone units is obviously the screaming headline," Cody Willard, chairman of Scutify (a financial social network), told Benzinga.

"That's what everybody is going to talk about. The rest of the business was in-line or slightly better than expected, but it's all about that iPhone for this report. The top-line in the earnings were gravy to the [74.5 million] base -- the main course, you might say."

Related Link: What Comes After The Apple Watch? 12 Patents Provide Clues

The Key To A Blowout Quarter

Global Equities Research analyst Trip Chowdhry told Benzinga that the key reason for Apple's blowout quarter is because it is a multi-year, multi-product, multi-geography, multi-services company.

"Not only that, but they have a device for every user behavior," said Chowdhry.

The analyst also suggested that if investors want to get into Apple, they might want to do so before the World Wide Developers Conference in June.

He said that once the company sets the stage for its next cycle in April, Apple will continue to grow. After that, there may not be another entry point at this level.

What About The iPad?

Few analysts are likely to spend time talking about the iPad this quarter, but its sales were not as low as some had feared.

"It was a shade below [my expectations]," Sean Udall, CIO of Quantum Trading Strategies and author of The TechStrat Report, told Benzinga. Apple sold 21.419 million units versus Udall's expectations of 23.01 million units.

His Mac predictions (5.64 million units) were nearly on par with the 5.519 million units that were sold. Apple blew away Udall's iPhone estimate of 69.11 million units.

Disclosure: At the time of this writing, Louis Bedigian had no position in the equities mentioned in this report.

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