Despite the bleak outlook for the year ahead, Apple racked up a record-breaking profit of £12.8 billion for the last three months of 2015.
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To put this in perspective, consider this one fact (it’s not a factoid, which is a lie): Apple’s “active installed base” is now one billion devices.
All eyes will now be on a budget iPhone 5se, a special edition with a four inch screen and revamped 5c features which is expected to be unveiled in March along with a new range of Apple watches.
Apple Inc’s (AAPL.O) downward trend is said to have disappointed chief strategist at TD Ameritrade J.J. Kinahan, who said the technology company missed a chance to introduce a product that could excite the market and arrest the downward slide of the company’s sales.
The iPad’s decline continued as sales fell from 24.4 million to 16.1 million over the past year and revenues slumped from $9 billion to $7 billion. According to Newsweek, the latest available figures from Apple show that the most valuable company in history, ever, draws about 63 percent of its entire revenue from iPhone sales. “$100 of Apple’s non-US dollar revenue in Q4 of 2014 translated to only $85 last quarter due to the weakening currencies”. Apple shifted 74.8m handsets during the quarter, up 0.4 per cent year-on-year, the lowest growth since the iPhone’s launch in 2007.
And despite the slowdown, Apple remains the most profitable company in the S&P 500 and the most valuable publicly traded US tech company. The sales in iPhones last quarter grew only one percent over the 74.5 million iPhones sold in the same time period the year prior. It is important to note that the company’s own predictions state that its yearly revenue will decline. That could fuel another surge in sales. Apple relies on the iPhone for two-thirds of its revenue and a similar share of profit.
While the iPhone has been a phenomenal success, Apple has had less luck with its new products. Sales of iPhones are expected to decline in the second quarter, according to management.
At least for now, Apple “continues to be dominated by the iPhone and that will certainly, in the near run, continue to dictate the company’s prospects”, said analyst Bill Kreher of the Edward Jones investment firm.
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The company’s introduction of the iPhone 6 Plus a year earlier makes comparisons look particularly dire; Zino said that the market and Apple’s associated businesses will expect a rebound – and then some – from the announcement of the iPhone 7.
