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Apple revenues up 22% on strong growth in China

Today, Cupertino tech giant Apple had just announced the financial results for its fiscal 2015 fourth quarter ended September 26, 2015.

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The average price that Apple customers spent on iPhones was $670 last quarter, up an impressive $67 from a year ago.

Apple said revenue in the quarter was boosted by sales of iPhones, Macs, services and increasingly available Apple Watches.

“Fiscal 2015 was Apple’s most successful year ever, with revenue growing 28% to almost $234 billion”.

China has said to have accounted for a couple of million units sold during the launching weekend for the new iPhone, contributing to the record-breaking 13 million units sold in the first weekend of the release.

Apple Chief Executive Tim Cook offered a message for investors fretting about China’s cooling economy and what that might mean for sales of iPhones and other products: Things are going gangbusters, frankly. Revenue from the “other products” category, which includes the Apple Watch and Beats products, rose 61 percent to $3.0 billion. Gross margin increased to 39.9%, up from 38% a year ago.

“The street was fearing soft guidance and instead got a good December outlook”, said Daniel Ives, an analyst at FBR Capital Markets.

“Given the negative expectations, we think their December quarter guide, which implies about 3% year-over-year revenue growth, will be perceived positively given rather hard compares they had”, RBC Capital Markets analyst Amit Daryanani said in a note. By contrast, this year’s versions offered just incremental improvements, and a few analysts fretted that Apple would be hard-pressed to top last year’s sales. Apple Mac units had an increase of 4 percent year-over-year, beating the sales expectation of 5.6 million units to register a total of 5.71 million units sold. But the money Apple made from those iPhone sales grew even more – 36 percent – over previous year. That staggering number was driven largely by record iPhone sales for the fourth quarter. But perhaps the most remarkable statistic to take away from the iPhone numbers is that sales were up an incredible 99 percent in China year-over-year. The service now supports merchant rewards programs, Cook said.

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The stock moved upwards on the back of results but gave up gains early after-hours and settled at -0.2 percent to $114.30.

A customer holds a bundle of Hong Kong dollar banknotes while purchasing an Apple Inc. iPhone 6 at the company's Causeway Bay store during the sales launch of the iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus in Hong Kong China on Friday Sept. 19 2014. Apple stores