Apple has announced company earnings for the second fiscal quarter of 2013. You can read the press release yourself for more details. The bullet points are as follows.

Quarterly Revenue: $43.6 B

Quarterly Net Profit: $9.5 B

Gross Margin: 37.5%

International Sales: 66%

iPhone: 37.4 M

iPad: 19.5 M

Mac: 4 M

The stock is trading up in aftermarket trading, but I don’t expect it to last. Apple is going to continue to pay a price for their obscenely high gross margins a year ago. Most companies, and every hardware company, would kill for gross margins in the mid to high thirties. It’s approximately where Apple has operated for much of the last decade, but they somehow managed margins in the forties for a few quarters and now the geniuses on Wall Street expect that to continue. It can’t, so there will be blood.

I think it’s worth taking a look to see exactly what the perfect storm was that allowed gross margin to climb to the levels it. I wonder if it might be somewhat cyclical based on product or the market.