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Apple gives weak forecast, shares fall nearly 7 percent

Cook, however, offered some insight based on Apple’s data for its fiscal quarter ended June 27: “The Apple Watch sell-through was higher than the comparable launch periods of the original iPhone or the original iPad“. Analysts surveyed by FactSet were expecting $1.8 billion in watch sales.

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“We estimate Apple Watch shipped 4.0 million units and captured a dominant 75 percent smartwatch market share worldwide in Q2 2015″, said Strategy Analytics Neil Mawston in a statement. Software updates for OS X, Apple’s operating system for its personal computers, also were down during the period. Apple missed analyst expectations with its third quarter iPhone sales, gave a weak revenue forecast, and remained cagey about Apple Watch sales.

Unit sales of the iPhone disappointed, and Apple Watch sales appeared to be light.

HTC has also lowered its revenue forecast for the quarter, as it blamed weak sales in China and lower demand for high-end Android phones. As Compared to Q3 2014, iPhone sales grew by an impressive 34.9 percent while iPad sales, as expected, declined by as much as 17.9 percent.

The growth was fueled by record third quarter sales of iPhone and Mac, all-time record revenue from services and the successful launch of Apple Watch.

Cook brushed aside any worry about iPhone sales growth, expressing confidence it has “lots of legs” that it will be running with for many years to come given market factors such customer satisfaction rates and the booming overall global smartphone market.

The firm sold 47.5m iPhones during the second quarter.

The Apple Watch is regarded with great importance by investors, as it is the first major new product that has been launched by the company since the death of its former CEO and founder Steve Jobs in 2011.

Apple will continue to have a good year, as new products will be released later this year. Last year, during the same quarter, Apple had profits of $7.7 billion of $37.4 billion in revenue and an earnings per share of $1.28.

Of 48 analysts covering Apple, 16 have “strong buy” rating, 21 a “buy”, 10 a “hold” and one a “sell”, according to Thomson Reuters data.

Chief executive Satya Nadella said: “Our approach to investing in areas where we have differentiation and opportunity is paying off with Surface, Xbox, Bing, Office 365, Azure and Dynamics CRM Online all growing by at least double-digits”. In this note, we will focus on the performance and outlook for the iPhone and our expectations for the Apple Watch during Q3. This number is the increase in the other product category that Apple announced in the earnings call yesterday.

The Apple boss said last autumn that he did not want to reveal detailed figures for the watch, which went on sale on 24 April, to avoid giving competitors inside information.

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Strategy Analytics predicted Apple Watch shipments to reach 15.4 million units this year to lead the industry.

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