Mac Daddy

Apple Computer Inc. (Cupertino, Calif.) announced yesterday that its fourth quarter profits more than doubled because of continued strong sales of iPod music players, beating Wall Street estimates by a wide margin, despite a shortage of the semiconductors that are used in some of its computers.

Sales in Apple’s retail stores nearly doubled in the quarter, and the company is about to open a store in London, its first in Europe.

“It was a great quarter,” said Apple ceo Steven Jobs. “We sold a lot of Macs and we sold a lot of iPods, and we managed our expenses very well.”

Jobs said it was Apple’s highest fourth-quarter revenue in nine years.

Analysts said the fourth quarter offered a significant example of how Apple was transforming itself from a computer company into a digital music and entertainment company. In the quarter, the company sold more than two million iPods and 836,000 Macintosh computers.

“The line between Apple being a computer company and a consumer electronics company is getting pretty fuzzy,” said one analyst.

Apple cfo Peter Oppenheimer said the company ended the fourth quarter with a backlog of orders for the iPod mini and the full-size iPod, which Apple refers to as the classic. But the company said it continued to suffer from an shortage of G5 microprocessors from I.B.M. Corp. (Armonk, N.Y.), the chips used in many of Apple’s most powerful Macintoshes. The problem was first revealed at the end of last quarter, when Jobs described a “speed bump” he expected to resolve by the fourth quarter. But the problem has persisted, and Apple executives concede that they do not know when I.B.M. will catch up. The shortage, caused by problems in I.B.M.’s conversion to a more efficient manufacturing process, contributed to a 50 percent drop in sales of Apple’s flat-screen iMac. The company said the chip shortage had kept it from meeting demand for its most powerful G5-based PowerMac.