Apple in October said it was expecting revenue between $75.5 billion and $77.5 billion.
Advertisement
Cook also highlighted that Apple continues to see growth in China, with revenue growing 14 percent over past year, and Apple saw its highest ever quarterly iPhone sales and record App Store performance in China.
Last year, Apple sold 74.5 million units in the fiscal first quarter.
Analysts and industry-watchers have been forecasting an iPhone sales decline for the past several weeks, pointing at signs like lowered Apple orders for critical phone components and apparently diminished demand for the current iPhone 6s. It had $75.9 billion in revenue, an increase of 1.7 percent.
Shareholders took a deep breath after Apple released its quarterly financial report Tuesday, as the worst of their fears were not realized. (AAPL) on Tuesday reported fiscal first-quarter earnings of $18.36 billion.
Sales of iPads plunged precipitously – a 56 percent drop in revenues and 25 percent fall in unit sales as the market for tablets cooled.
For the March quarter, Apple projected revenue of $50 billion to $53 billion, down from $55 billion a year ago.
Even though the iPhone is still Apple’s biggest revenue driver by a large margin, this indicates sales of Apple’s golden goose are slowing, and it could spell trouble for the company moving forward.
Apple shares have slid 20 per cent since past year on these concerns. Revenue was up in China, Europe, and Asia Pacific but down in Americas and Japan.
The last time Apple’s sales fell year over year was March 2003.
“The fact remains that 2016 is year when Apple needs to come up with revolutionary rather than evolutionary product”.
Advertisement
Cook also noted that the company has 10 million paying subscribers for its Apple Music streaming service just four months after it began asking people to pay (there was a free trial period for early subscribers). Cook explained how these currency fluctuations have had a meaningful negative impact on Apple’s results, noting that with constant currency Apple’s earnings would have been more than $5b higher, or more than the total annual revenue of an average Fortune 500 company. In a report this week, analyst Colin Gillis of BGC Financial warned that “the big issue for Apple” is whether the company can garner significant amounts of revenue from those new products.
