For the period, a total of 75.80 million iPhone units were sold, slightly higher than last year’s 74.50 million units.
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The company’s latest iPhone, the 6s, has been viewed by many analysts as offering too incremental an improvement on earlier models and so the figures in its report may signal that customers are expecting more significant changes before upgrading.
The iPad continued to struggle, with unit sales of 16.122 million on revenue of $7.084 billion (£4.95 billion) – falling 25 per cent and 21 per cent respectively. Gross margin was 40.1 percent compared to 39.9 percent in the year-ago quarter. Despite extreme stock market weakness and slowing economic growth in the world’s largest country, revenue grew 14% year over year in Greater China to $18.37 billion, though the company did cite weakness in Hong Kong, which is also included in the region.
Tim Cook, CEO of Apple, in a statement explained that Apple’s services business and its growth lead to the acceleration for the quarter which produced record results.
But Apple, which Tuesday posted record quarterly profit despite the iPhone faltering for the first time since it was launched in 2007, remains optimistic about the overall smartphone market.
“It’s disappointing to see them miss on an already downward adjusted sales number and the fact is that with their iPhone growth slowing what was needed was a product to be excited about”.
Two thirds of Apple’s revenue is now generated outside the U.S., Cook explained, “so foreign currency fluctuations have a very meaningful impact on our results”.
India can not immediately offset Apple’s woes in China, said analyst Neil Shah of Counterpoint Technology Market Research. Then there’s Apple’s cut of all the apps sold via the App Store, music and videos purchased through iTunes, and its own product-service plans. Mac sales also fell marginally from 5.52 million to 5.3 million, contributing revenues of $6.75 billion.
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During its final quarterly earnings call for 2015 and first for 2016, Apple revealed that as many as one billion Apple products are active around the world.
