Otherwise Apple, but has posted the strongest quarterly results in its history: the company did win $18.4 billion, the group said.
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Looking forward to Apple’s March quarter, the company anticipates revenue to fall in the $50 billion to $53 billion range, an estimate which likely points to a decline in iPhone sales year over year.
Apple stock is down almost 3 percent during after-hours trading on the news of the revenue miss and slowing iPhone sales. Still, Apple admitted it sold 74.7 million iPhones, 16.1 million iPads, and 5.3 million Macs before the close of the quarter on 26 December.
But here’s the deal: iPhone sales won’t keep climbing forever-though they’re still growing, it’s at a slower rate than ever before, from 74.5 million units to 74.8 million year-over-year. Granted, Apple has shipped far more than a billion devices in the past; the company sold its billionth iOS device back in November 2014.
Overall, the company said the overall number of active devices has reached 1 billion, including Apple Watch and Apple TV.
“We have become more and more of a platform company”, Chief Financial Officer Luca Maestri told The Associated Press.
The tech giant’s services revenue increased 15% to $5.5 billion and installed base related revenue rose 24% $8.9 billion during the quarter.
The Apple watch will not fill that role – we’ve still not even heard any sales figures for the product.
Growth was exceptionally hard to come by in the last quarter of 2015, particularly as iPhones just barely beat out sales from a year earlier. Net profit hit $18.36n, up from $18.02b while revenue grew by 1.7% to $75.87b.
But the really bad news – at least, as bad as it can get for a company that’s just reported record revenues and profits – was for the iPad range.
Still, with the money Apple has in the bank, it has something of a cushion to figure out its next move. “In terms of VR, I don’t think it’s a niche”, the Apple CEO said in answer to an analyst’s question.
Coming off a huge quarter past year for the iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus, it’s not surprising Apple didn’t see more growth for what were essentially incremental updates to the phones in the iPhone 6S and 6S Plus.
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The company’s revenue follows the same pattern. The Mac’s sales revenue is down 3% while unit sales are down 4% year-over-year.
