It was perhaps management decision and getting ready for the worst. When a company seems to be doing well it just doesn’t follow that employees are safe from being laid off. That is the scenario for Apple which had reported positive revenue for the second quarter of the year.

For its fiscal 2009 second quarter ended March 28, 2009 the company posted revenue of $8.16 billion and a net quarterly profit of $1.21 billion. These results compare to revenue of $7.51 billion and net quarterly profit of $1.05 billion at the end of the same quarter a year ago.

However, just because the books are shining, doesn’t mean all is well within the company. Apple reported that it employed 14,000 full-time equivalents, down from 15,600 at the end of 2008. While most are claiming that the company is cutting 1,600 people, Apple said is counting man-hours as opposed to actual men. This fits in with old reports that the company was planning to reduce the number of hours worked by part-time employees in an effort to save money without making cuts. The company was apparently reducing hours for part-timers and giving more to full-time workers.

While it’s a little bit surprising given the fact that we just heard how well the company is doing, at the end of the day, it makes a lot of sense. It wasn’t sales of computers that gave Apple its recession-beating numbers this quarter. In fact, sales of Mac 2.22 million desktops and notebooks is a 3 percent decline from a year ago. While iPods were up 3 percent, selling an impressive 11.01 million during the quarter. The real growth came from the iPhone, selling 3.79 million, representing 123 percent unit growth over the year-ago quarter.

If people are buying iPhones from their cell phone provider and iPods from Best Buy or, well, pretty much anywhere, there’s no point employing all those people to just sell computers.

(Source) Toms Guide

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