Apple's iTunes revenues top $1.1 billion in Q1

Apple (NASDAQ:AAPL) posted record revenues in its fiscal first quarter, bolstered by its iTunes digital media storefront as well as booming sales of its iPhone and iPad devices. Apple's Q1 revenue clocked in at $26.74 billion, up 71 percent from $15.68 billion in its year-ago quarter; the computing giant sold 16.24 million iPhones, up from 8.7 million in the year-ago period and surpassing the 14.1 million units it sold in its fiscal fourth quarter. In addition, Apple sold 7.33 million iPads in Q1, nearly equal to the 7.46 million consumers purchased during the tablet's first two quarters of availability.

The iTunes Store generated revenues of $1.1 billion in fiscal Q1, with Apple CFO Peter Oppenheimer citing strong music, video and iOS application sales during the company's Tuesday earnings call. iTunes finally began selling the Beatles catalog in late 2010, and its Japanese arm introduced feature film downloads--according to Apple, iTunes consumers are now renting and purchasing over 400,000 TV episodes and over 150,000 movies per day. In addition, the App Store is rapidly approaching the 10 billion download milestone.

Asked to comment on Apple's ongoing battle with Google's (NASDAQ:GOOG) Android operating system for mobile industry supremacy, COO Timothy Cook said "We have the highest customer [satisfaction] ratings in the industry versus Android or [Research In Motion] (NASDAQ:RIMM) or any--we have the largest App Store with over 300,000 apps. We have now sold over 160 million iOS devices. And I mean, this is huge. And we fundamentally believe that our integrated approach delivers a far superior customer experience than the fragmented approach. And you can see this in a variety of ways from the fragmentation of the number of App Stores out there that people are going to pull their hair out, because they're going to have a variety of updating methodologies, and a variety of payment methods, and slightly different derivatives."

Despite Apple's impressive Q1 numbers, the company faces serious questions moving forward--Steve Jobs, Apple's influential CEO, recently announced he will take a medical leave of absence, his second in two years. Cook, who took over as acting CEO in 2009 during Jobs' last leave of absence, will perform the same duties again.

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