The number is also higher than the $1.42 earnings a year ago.
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Apple sold 48.05 million iPhones, a bit under expectations, but still good for a 22 percent increase year-over-year. Those dropped a whopping 20 percent year over year to 9.1 billion units. But Apple noted that overall demand for other personal computers is down.
It didn’t report sales of Apple Watch, which was included in the “other products” category. Revenue from services such as AppleCare rose 10 percent to $5.1 billion.
Analysts were concerned with Apple’s ability to continue growing strongly into 2016. That is an improvement of 22.33 percent year-over-year, from the 39.27 million units sold in Q4 FY2014. Also, the coming quarters will show us whether Apple’s new payment plan can expand the market for its phones.
The decline is important as many analysts believe China is poised to replace the United States as Apple’s biggest market – only this suggests that it is losing its grip.
The stock moved upwards on the back of results but gave up gains early after-hours and settled at -0.2 percent to $114.30.
The forecast for the traditionally strong fiscal first quarter – which includes Christmas – is revenue between $75.5 billion and $77.5 billion and operating income between $6.3 billion and $6.4 billion.
Yet Apple’s guidance, while confident, still sat in the lower end of analyst projections for the holidays.
That issue came to light even more by the muted forecast Apple posted for its holiday quarter, and the unwillingness of Tim Cook the company CEO to speak in detail during a conference call about the plans Apple has to increase sales in 2016.
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Apple has reported Asia Pacific region revenues of $3.93 billion for the quarter ended October 2015, registering a modest 9.47% growth from $3.59 billion in the same quarter a year ago. He noted that the company’s outlook reflects the stronger dollar, which has stunted growth for many global companies. Excluding the effects of currency changes, Cook said the company would grow between 8% and 11% this quarter. It also is working to foster the community of third-party developers who are writing mobile applications for the App Store, which logged triple-digit growth in the quarter.
