Apple rises a little bit after earnings release. A preliminary behind the numbers.

As of this writing, Apple closed up 0.74%, but lost 0.84% in after hours trading, following the release of Q4 earnings.

Whether this release was good or bad seems to be in the eye of the beholder as Apple manages to:

It is truly everything to everyone.

Let’s take a look behind the numbers, as we’ll get into the rest of the release in a later post. They had net income of $7.5 billion on net sales of about $37.5 billion for the quarter. That’s a lot of dough, but is anything else going on?

After a seasonal dip in revenue in Q3, revenue increased about 7.1% from the previous quarter. For Q3 2012, revenues also dipped, but they only dipped 11% as we see here:

Q3 2012 Revenue Q4 2012 Revenue % Change Q3 2013 Revenue Q4 2013 Revenue % Change $35.0 $36.0 2.9% $35.3 $37.5 6.2%

Revenue grew fast from Q3 to Q4 from 2012 to 2013, driven by increases in iPhone sales. Which is good.

However, we also see continued declining performance in iPads, which is not good.

Well, for one thing, the average contribution per unit of the iPhone increased from $581 to $619 as Apple introduced an upgraded iPhone product line.

However, there is the iPad, which had a $947 million decline in revenue and a decline in per unit price to $440 from $508.

Here is the breakdown by product category:

Product Q4 2012 Units Q4 2012 Revenue per Product Q4 2012 % of Total Revenue Per Product Q4 2013 Units Q4 2013 Revenue per Product Q4 2013 % of Total Revenue Per Product iPhone 26,910 $16,645 46.3% 33,797 $19,510 52.1% iPad 14,036 $7,133 19.8% 14,079 $6,186 16.5% Mac 4,923 $6,617 18.4% 4,574 $5,624 15.0% iPod 5,344 $820 2.3% 3,498 $573 1.5%

Note: Units in thousands, dollars in millions.

The Christmas season should be an interesting and crucial one in Cupertino to see how Apple progresses as a growth company.