According to the company, the sales are flatlining – they sold 74.8 million iPhones in the last quarter of 2015 as against 74.5 million they had sold in the same period past year. Their fourth-quarter iPhone sales surpassed their previous record of 74.5 million sales – set during the last quarter of 2014 – by a fractionally higher 300,000.
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Apple Inc is expected to report a 1.3 percent increase in iPhone sales in the holiday quarter, its slowest ever and a far cry from the double-digit growth investors have come to expect.
Apple forecast second-quarter revenue of $50 billion to $53 billion, below analysts’ average forecast of $55.6 billion.
While the release made it easy to determine that 74.8 million iPhones were sold, in line with analyst estimates, Apple’s “other” category makes it hard to assess how many Apple Watches and TVs were purchased.
Apple signalled that the iPhone would see its first ever decline in sales in the current quarter, after growth was reduced to a rounding error in the three months to December. Instead, they were seeking guidance for 2016, some sort of sign that Apple expects a slowdown-the first time the company expects iPhone sales to decline year-over-year. Meanwhile, global sales accounted for 66 percent of the first quarter’s revenue.
Cook said that this year brought a record number of conversions from Android, which doubtless was a large number – considering Android had 1.4 billion active devices in fall of 2015, and certainly more now.
The Cupertino, Calif.-based technology giant reported quarterly profit of $18.4 billion, or $3.28 cents a share (statement). According to CNET, this would be Apple’s first year-over-year quarterly decline in a decade.
Apple’s board of directors has declared a cash dividend of $.47 per share of the Company’s common stock.
On the other hand, CFO Luca Maestri, commented, “Our record sales and strong margins drove all-time records for net income and EPS in spite of a very hard macroeconomic environment”. Apple services, such as the App Store, iCloud and Apple Pay, increased to $6.05 billion in the quarter, marking a massive 26 percent increase year over year. Apple’s overall revenue of $75.9 billion was less than the consensus of $76.6 billion among analysts polled in advance by Thomson Financial.
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Sales of iPads saw a 56% drop in revenues and 25% dip in unit sales as the market for tablet computers cooled.
