Apple Computer said on Wednesday it had made its quarterly profit target despite slowing sales after the Sept 11 attacks, but it cut its current quarter earnings goal to nearly half what Wall Street had expected, fearing the holiday season would fall flat. Apple's new retail stores would lose money in the current quarter rather than breaking even, and business as a whole was suffering since the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, Chief Financial Officer Fred Anderson said.
The company looked to offset some of that disappointment by promising what could be its first major hardware offering outside its flagship Macintosh computer line since the Newton handheld in 1993, but Anderson made no promises sales would jump.
Cupertino, California-based Apple reported fourth-quarter operating earnings of $65 million, or 18 cents per share, down 40 percent from $108 million, or 30 cents per diluted share, in the year-earlier quarter.
Sales for the period ending in September dropped to $1.45 billion from $1.87 billion.

Apple, one of the few PC-makers that had not warned about its results in recent weeks, had targeted a slight increase from third-quarter earnings of 17 cents per share and sales of $1.475 billion. Bureau Report