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That's true of revenue, but as far as I know there's not as much annual cyclicity for margins.

I don't know much about consumer product sales, but I wouldn't think that it's entirely impossible that different products have somewhat different seasonal sales patterns.

People buy lots of laptops in August/September for back to school. People buy lots of iPods in December for gifts. People buy lots of iPhones in whatever quarter they launch a new iPhone in.

That's not always accurate, Apple's Q4 2011 and Q3 2011 are fine to compare here, the product mix particularly phones and ipads shipped are much closer then Q4 2011 and Q4 2010.

timing of product launches doesn't matter. In finance investors always compare year over year to evaluate the performance of their investments.

He's not evaluating the performance of an investment, he's asking why the margin is different which is generally a product mix question.

same thing applies. year-over-year comparisons are more accurate.

Not always and certainly not in this case.

@phil it's true for all numbers.

Why? Genuinely curious.