SiliconBeat

Apple, which impressed Wall Street Wednesday by turning in its best non-holiday quarter results ever, revealed Friday in a regulatory filing that it cut the equivalent of 1,600 employees from its retail operations during the quarter. The maker of iPods, iPhones and Mac computers reported having the equivalent of 14,000 full-time employees as of March 31, down from the 15,600 it reported at the end of the holiday season on Dec. 31. During the comparable quarter the year before, Apple’s stores boosted employment by 600.

Apple, which added one new store during the most recent quarter, had 252 locations as of March 31. The average number of full-time equivalent positions per store dropped 11 percent during that time, from 62.2 during the holiday quarter to 55.6 in the March quarter.

Last year, Apple added both more stores and more employees per each during the comparable period, when it opened four new stores, and ended the quarter with 57.7 employees per store, up from 55.9 at the end of the December 2007 quarter.

Sales per employee plummeted during the past holiday season, however. In the quarter ended Dec. 31, Apple store employees generated about $94,000 each in sales, down 37 percent from the $149,000 they generated during the holiday quarter the year before.

The recent workforce cuts boosted sales per employee to $105,000 during its most recent quarter, up 11.5 percent from the quarter before but 13 percent lower year-over-year.

Sales at Apple’s retail stores grew only 1 percent year over year in the most recent quarter, despite a 21 percent increase in the number of its stores. In addition to the “challenging consumer-spending environment” the company blamed its own lackluster retail sales on expansion in the number of other retailers offering its products, such as Target, Best Buy, Fry’s and RadioShack.