Apple Records Q4 2011 Earnings of $6.6B on $28.3B in Revenue, Tops $100 Billion in Sales for Fiscal 2011

Apple today announced financial results for the third calendar quarter and fourth fiscal quarter of 2011 — plus the full fiscal year. For the quarter, Apple posted revenue of $28.27 billion and net quarterly profit of $6.62 billion, or $7.05 per diluted share, compared to revenue of $20.34 billion and net quarterly profit of $4.31 billion, or $4.64 per diluted share, in the year-ago quarter. Gross margin was 40.3 percent, compared to 36.9 percent in the year-ago quarter, and international sales accounted for 63 percent of the quarter’s revenue. Apple now has $81.57 billion in cash and marketable securities.

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iMacs sold between May 2011 and July 2011 could be subject to a recall if they contain 1TB Seagate hard drives. Apple announced on Friday that it had begun a hard drive replacement program for affected iMacs, offering a support page on its website that lets users look up their serial numbers to see whether their machines are included in the program.

Apple says that the 1TB drives “may fail under certain conditions,” but did not elaborate on its site as to what conditions those might be. (It’s too bad one of those conditions isn’t “hard drive fan randomly comes on and stays on forever until machine is shut down,” as that’s the particular annoyance I have been living with on my 27″ iMac since the end of 2009.) The machines that fall under the recall appear to be those that were updated at the beginning of May with Thunderbolt compatibility, FaceTime HD, and quad-core i5 and i7 processors.

Regardless, once users confirm that their serial numbers are covered under the program, they can take their iMacs into an Apple Retail Store or an Authorized Service Provider for a free replacement. There is a small catch though: you need to bring your original OS installation discs that came with your iMac so that your replacement hard drive will have an operating system on it when you get back. So get to digging in that office closet—you have until July 23, 2012 to get that drive replaced!

Source: Arstechnica