Apple reported healthy results for its second fiscal quarter of the year, with both revenue and profit boosted by strong iPhone sales.

The company reported revenue of $45.6 billion, up 4.6 per cent from $43.6 billion in the first quarter of 2013. Net profit was $10.2 billion, a 7.4 per cent year-on-year increase. Gross margin was also up, at 39.3 per cent, compared with 37.5 per cent a year previously.

Apple CEO Tim Cook said revenue was ahead of the company’s expectations, and represented a record for the March quarter and a non-holiday quarter.

The iPhone was a key product during the period with 43.7 million devices sold, a record for the March quarter and 17 per cent higher than sales for the same period a year ago.

“These stronger results were broad-based both from a product point of view with demand for each of our three iPhones stronger than its predecessor and from a geographic standpoint,” Cook said, adding that the company increased its smartphone share in a number of developed and emerging markets.

iPhone sales in Japan were up more than 50 per cent year-on-year with Apple establishing an impressive smartphone market share of 55 per cent. A new record for iPhone sales was established in the BRIC markets.

Sales in China were boosted by the addition of China Mobile to the operators selling the iPhone in the country. International sales accounted for 66 per cent of the company’s total revenue for the period.

iPad sales of 16.4 million units were at the high-end of the firm’s expectations but lower than the 19.4 million sold in the same quarter in 2013, and below analyst estimates.

Cook attributed this to Apple reducing its iPad channel inventory during the quarter and a substantial backlog of iPad mini devices at the end of last year that were shipped in March.

“We continue to believe that the tablet market will surpass the PC market in size within the next few years and we believe that Apple will be a major beneficiary of this trend,” Cook noted.

Apple continued to attract new customers with two-thirds of consumers registering an iPad in the past six months being new to the tablet, while more than half of people registering iPhones were new to the Apple smartphone.

During the March quarter the company returned close to $21 billion to shareholders via dividend payments and share repurchases, according to CFO Peter Oppenheimer. These payments brought the total payments under Apple’s capital return programme to $66 billion.

Apple also announced it would add $30 billion to its programme of returning capital to shareholders, bringing the total to $130 billion. It expects to complete the programme, first established two years ago, by the end of 2015.

The majority of the capital return will continue to be carried out via share repurchases although the company plans to increase its dividend payments for the second time in less than two years.

For the current fiscal quarter, Apple forecast revenue of between $36 billion and $38 billion, and a gross margin of 37-38 per cent.