Tim Cook: We Sold More iPhone Units Than Expected (To The Tune Of $31 Billion)

Apple Inc. AAPL's iPhone sales had a pretty decent quarter.

The company's Q3 iPhone revenue was up 59 percent to $31.37 billion, selling a record-breaking 47.5 million units. This is a 35 percent gain from the year-ago period.

Following its Q3 earnings report, CEO Tim Cook touched on these figures during the company's conference call.

"Channel inventory did go down by 600,000. We sold more units than we thought we would. That was a part of that," Cook said. "We always run with just the amount of inventory that we think we need. To the degree that sales are distributed in countries with disproportionately shorter supply chains or the standard deviation is less, we would always choose to have less."

"In this particular quarter we were able to end right at the bottom of our range. We view that as a good thing, not a bad thing."

Related Link: Apple Sells A Record-Breaking 47.5 Million iPhones, But Is Wall Street Underwhelmed?

Apple said iPhone revenue growth was broadbased, as the tech giant enjoyed the highest switchover rate from Android ever recorded.

"The loyalty rate we have versus competition, an enormous gap there," Cook continued. "I also look at first-time iPhone buyers. We're still seeing very large numbers in the countries you would want to see that in, like China, Russia and Brazil and so forth."

Despite the record-breaking figures, tech expert Sean Udall told Benzinga the quarter was "very solid" but "not the Apple-crush that people were thinking."

Follow Benzinga's conference call live blog here.

Shares of Apple fell 7 percent in Tuesday's after-hours session after closing at $130.75.