The company has sold over 48 million iPhone units for the period, which it stated were “record sales for Q4”, though this data did fell short of analysts’ projections.
Advertisement
“We generated over $5.1 billion in [Services] revenue, a new all-time record, and an increase of 10% over a year ago mainly due to strong growth from apps”.
Wall Street had been modeling for EPS of $3.22 a share, up 5%, on sales of $77.17 billion, up 3%.
Apple’s net profit for the quarter came in at $11.1 billion (£7.25 billion), jumping from $8.5 billion (£5.5 billion) previous year.
Cook cautioned that he doesn’t think Apple can withstand major economic shocks in China, but he said right now, “You really can’t tell the difference, if you look at our daily and weekly numbers”. The fiscal fourth quarter included only two days of sales of the new iPhones.
Apple investors are looking to break the company’s own holiday sales record.
Still, with the China market still very much enamored with the iPhone and the Apple Watch continuing to gain ground, Apple has at least a good shot at wowing us yet again.
Gross margin for the quarter was 39.9 percent compared to 38 percent in the year-ago quarter, with global sales accounting for 62 percent of revenue.
NXP Semiconductors, which makes the “swipe” technology integral to the iPhone’s Apple Pay feature, was up 2.8 percent after the bell.
As usual, Cook didn’t speak on the number of Apple Watches, new iPhones or iPads sold in the period, but the overall revenues do speak for themselves.
Apple Inc. continues to invest in research, development, marketing, distribution, infrastructure supply chain, said its CEO Tim Cook, as well as on its online and retail stores, while completing 15 acquisitions to enhance its products and services. Analysts put this down to seasonal buying and said they expect China to replace the United States as Apple’s biggest market.
“We believe that iPhone will grow in Q1 and we base that on what we are seeing from an [Android] switcher point of view”, Cook said, according to a Seeking Alpha transcript.
Advertisement
Apple’s ability to charge higher average sale prices for its products has survived its expansion into China, a market that traditionally has favored low-cost phones.
