The Apple TV wasn’t updated a year ago, and the fourth-generation box is looking increasingly undesirable next to competing boxes from Roku and Amazon. Expectations were for $US6.5 billion in revenue from Mac sales. Shares are trading up almost 3 percent after hours.
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The company saw a record $78.4 billion in revenue in Q1 2017, compared to $75.9 billion in the same period past year. “We sold more iPhones than ever before and set all-time revenue records for iPhone, Services, Mac and Apple Watch”. However, year-over-year revenue was up 7 percent to $7.2 billion. Right now, the consensus is for $2.09 a share in earnings and $57.8 billion in revenue.
Some analysts say Apple remains too dependent on the iPhone and that it needs to better diversify its revenues amid a sputtering smartphone market and intense competition. In comparison, 23 percent of customers purchased the iPhone 6s Plus the year prior. The company is expecting operating expenses between $6.5 billion and $6.6 billion, and a tax rate of 26 percent.
Mac, too, saw its highest quarterly revenue ever with 5.4 million units sold, Maestri said.
It also includes $3bn in purchases in December 2016 alone, which Cook said makes for the Apple Store’s single-best month ever.
The results show Apple’s services business growing even faster than expected, while the iPad and other products did less well than many analysts expected. This compares favorably to the $50.6 billion the company made in Q2 of 2016, though it’s still below the $58 billion the Apple made in Q2 of 2015. Oppo was fourth with 2.8 percent and will aim to expand beyond China this year, Strategy Analytics noted. “App Store revenues will be the key gross margin driver for Apple over the next five years”, he said.
Apple’s services business continues to enjoy healthy growth.
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The current quarter, which ends in late March, isn’t expected to be a blowout. Number one is that the iPhone is still a vital product line, and Apple is making meaningful feature, function, and design changes to the device on a regular cycle. It also coincides with the holiday season which is traditionally Apple’s strongest quarter. “They were insisting on charging royalties for technologies they had nothing to do with”, he said. “The more we innovated… the more money Qualcomm would collect for no reason”.
