Last year, the market was watching smartphone penetration in the mobile market, Lamba said, while now analysts are eyeing market share, indicating the market is maturing.
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Apple’s profit jumped 31% last quarter, as customers continued to buy more expensive iPhones. Apart from that, 9.83 million iPads and 5.70 million Mac were also sold.
Analysts speculated a figure of about 48.5 million, but 4Q sales were still slightly above the 47.5 million units sold in Q3, reported TechCrunch.
Apple paid $17 billion to investors during the most recent quarter through share repurchases and dividends, and CFO Luca Maestri noted that Apple has completed more than $143 billion of its $200 billion capital-return programme. That number doesn’t include the iPhone 6S, which went on sale the day after Apple’s financial quarter ended. He also said Apple is seeing record numbers of people switching from phones made by rivals.
Looking forward, one of the most interesting things to watch will be how Apple’s iPhone sales fare going into 2016.
Apple’s size makes growth tougher to achieve.
Apple’s shares rose almost 3 percent in early trading on Wednesday.
Given Apple’s quarterly results and iPhone sales data, the tech giant can be said to have a bright future in China.
The new iPhones that Apple launched in September have performed well, with sales up 22 per cent year on year in Q4.
The growth question is a quandary created by Apple’s own success. In a few months, Apple TV owners will be able to tell the device to find a song or album the same way they’d tell it to find a movie. While this year’s new “S” models have additional features, they’re not as dramatically different from last year’s iPhones. Experts say it is due to two reasons, firstly due to depreciation of the rupee against dollar and higher tax, with imported smartphones attracting 11.5% more tax than locally assembled ones while this difference was just 5% a year ago. Revenue was $51.5 billion, up 22 per cent from a year ago.
Both sales and profit beat the consensus forecast of analyst polled by Thomson Reuters. But Piper Jaffray’s Gene Munster said in an email: “We view this as a relief, given investors were bracing” for lower iPhone sales.
So it has not been surprising that Apple reported $51.5 billion in revenue from its September quarter, according to a report from Apple Insider.
Enterprise business is also growing well for Apple.
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Though it remains the top dog in the smartphone market, Android is losing more users to Apple. Every other multinational has China as a headwind, but Apple has China at its back.
