Apple is paying the price for not coming up with anything new with the iPhone4S. The company's results, while great, were well below what Wall Street expected given the outfit's over priced share value.

Apple does not really have an excuse.  For the last year the press has been talking about how PCs were dying due to Apple's iPhone and iPad. But it turns out that PCs have been suffering from the same economic crisis which is finally hitting Apple. Apple's chief financial officer, Peter Oppenheimer said that when given a choice between older models and the “new” ones, Apple users were going for something cheaper. No doubt this is because people in Europe and America were starting to look at what its gadgets did for their buck, rather than just buying it because Jobs' Mob put it out.

CEO Tim Cook said that Cook also wants to blame the rubbish iPhone sales on anticipation building for the next iPhone model, which is due in October. However that argument is pants and is an admission that the iPhone4S was the worst phone that Apple has put in the shops. Normally people stop buying the phone three months before the new one goes on sale.  However iPHone4S sales had stalled six months before the new one comes out. What is more likely is that people looked at the iPhone 4S and decided it was the same as the fairly broken iPhone 4 which they could buy cheaply. The only real difference was the Siri voice activated search, which proved broken and besides did not work properly in the EU.

Net income in Apple's fiscal third quarter was $8.8 billion, or $9.32 per share. That was up 21 per cent from $7.3 billion. Revenue at Apple was $35 billion, up 23 per cent. Analysts were expecting $37.5 billion. Apple shares fell $31.92, or 5.3 percent, to $569 in after-hours trading, after the release of the results.

If the iPhone 5 is just a slimmed down iPhone 4S with a bigger screen, as expected, then Apple might have its work cut out justifying why cash strapped punters should waste their cash on it. It might be that the company has finally run out of ideas and needs some new hardware to push.