Apple stock drops on lower than expected iPhone sales

Apple (Nasdaq: AAPL) stock dropped nearly 4 percent Wednesday after the company reported lower than expected iPhone sales during its fiscal fourth quarter.

While the 17.1 million iPhones Apple sold during the quarter represented a 21 percent jump in sales compared to this time last year, analysts had expected Apple to report 19 million iPhone sales. The news saw Apple stock drop to $406.94 by 11:20 a.m. ET, down $15.30, or 3.62 percent.

Apple said that it had sold 11.12 million iPads during the quarter, which was about 1 million more than analysts had projected. But the company will face increased competition during the holiday season in the tablet space from Amazon's (Nasdaq: AMZN) new Kindle Fire tablet, which costs just $199.

New CEO Tim Cook said in Apple's earnings release that the company expects to perform well during the holiday season with sales of its new iPhone 4S. Apple reported $28.27 billion in revenue for its fiscal fourth quarter and a net profit of $6.62 billion, up from the $20.34 billion in revenue and $4.31 billion in net profit that it reported during the same period last year.

For more:
- see the earnings release
- FierceWireless has this story
- CNET has this story

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