Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL) Round Up: iPad Mini, Quarterly Earnings, Samsung Case

The week ending Oct. 27 was eventful for Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL) starting out the launch of its iPad Mini and ending with its results and somewhere in between some judgements in its on-going legal battles with Samsung over patent infringements.

Let's start with the iPad Mini first, which was launched on Tuesday. Latest information suggests that the company online store has run out of stock of the smaller versions of the iPad, after just 35hours of becoming available for pre-orders.

The ones that are being snapped up quickly are the 16GB Wi-Fi models in black and slate. Incidentally the white and silver models sold out on the launch day itself.

So that is good news for the company. The iPad Mini with a near 8 inch display screen come in these sizes - 16GB, 32 GB and 64 GB and the two colour combinations of black & slate and white & silver.

The 16GB models are priced at $329, the 32GB at $429 and the 64GB model retails for $529, making it more expensive than the lowest capacity of the regular-sized iPad.

With about 300,000 apps available for download, the iPad Mini is powered by the A5 chip, and is equipped with all the things that the full-sized iPad has. At 7.2 millimetres it is 23 percent thinner than the iPad and 53 percent lighter.

Apple's results disappointed but that's only because expectations from the iPhone maker are much higher compared to other tech companies. It sold fewer iPads than anticipated, partly due to weak demand and partly as customers held off purchases on expectations of the new iPad Mini.

Apple shipped 26.9 million iPhones, somewhat higher than the 25 million to 26 million that Wall Street analysts had predicted. Sales of the iPad came in at 14 million in the fiscal fourth quarter, well below lowered forecasts for the tablet.

Apple ended its fiscal 2012 with a 45 percent increase in revenue to $156.5 billion, while net income was up 61 percent.

In the fourth quarter, it posted net income of $8.2 billion or $8.67 a diluted share in the fiscal fourth quarter, versus $6.6 billion or $7.05 a share a year earlier. Its earnings beat analysts' average forecast for $8.75.

Fiscal fourth quarter revenue rose to $35.96 billion, roughly in line with the average analyst estimate of 35.8 billion.

In the middle of the week on Wednesday, a court in the Netherlands ruled that Korean consumer electronics company Samsung did not infringe on a certain Apple patent related to multi-touch technology.

"With these products Samsung does not infringe the claims that Apple has made," the court said in its ruling.

An earlier ruling had found that Samsung had not copied the design patents of the iPad with the Galaxy 10.1.

According to the court, Samsung did not infringe on the iPhone maker's pinch-to-zoom patent. In fact Apple has asserted this particular property as its proprietary feature and it figures in many of its battles against other handset makers.

Apple ended the week with fall of nearly 1 percent for the week at $604 a share.