Apple’s fourth quarter capped off another record year for the company.
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But investors anxious that China sales dipped from the quarter immediately before it, when Apple notched US$13.2 billion in revenue there.
Full-year revenue was at $233.7 billon.
AAPL stock climbed after hours on Tuesday after the company reported higher-than-expected sales and earnings for the fourth quarter. Apple this year also released a “Move to iOS” app for Android that makes the migration over to the world of all things iOS much more seamless of a process.
While the iPhone continues to grow, the iPad has been facing declines.
Piper Jaffray is anticipating that 75 percent of US consumers of iPhones will become annual upgraders before 2018 comes to a close, said Gene Munster, managing director and senior research analyst at Piper Jaffray. “It gets harder to show growth”.
Profit was $11.1 billion, which is a boost from the $8.5 billion that Apple achieved a year ago. Gross margin, a measure of profitability, widened to 39.9 percent. Now that everybody on earth knows they want an iPhone, Apple can focus on pushing them into every office.
Apple sold 48 million iPhones in the September quarter, a rise of 22 per cent from a year ago. Apple sold 9.9 million tablets, generating $4.28 billion.
Last year’s iPhone 6 and 6 Plus tapped into strong demand from consumers who had envied the larger screens offered by Apple’s competitors. Sales of iPads were down by a fifth, the earnings announcement said.
On the other side, the iPad seems to be in serious trouble, with shipments down 20 percent year-over-year to 9.88 million units; the lowest number since 2011. The company’s forecast for the current quarter, ending in December, suggests it will slightly surpass last year’s record for selling 74.5 million iPhones during the crucial holiday season. Mac purchases rose to 5.71 million, compared with an average projection of 5.6 million.
To skeptics, the company has run out of new geographic regions to introduce the iPhone, and without new hit products, it’s reaching the limits.
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There hasn’t been news on whether Visa or MasterCard will partner up to facilitate Apple Pay in Singapore, or the other countries listed above, making the worldwide rollout somewhat limited in its scope.
