The iPhone, Apple’s most important product, is weakening, but the US group is still on its usual billions in profits. This is ensured by other products, from the iPad to the Apple Watch, and the business with services. Apple earned just under $ 20 billion in the last quarter, almost as much as in the same quarter last year, even though sales dropped five percent to $ 84.3 billion.
IPhone sales alone dropped 15 percent year-on-year to just under $ 52 billion. Thus, the smartphone still brought about 61 percent of Apple revenues – otherwise, however, there had been more than two thirds in part. CEO Tim Cook explained the decline mainly with unexpectedly weak sales of the iPhone in China, now the world’s largest smartphone market.
But the strong dollar, which made Apple products more expensive in some regions, as well as less subsidies from mobile operators, also played a role, Cook said. In Japan, less than half of the smartphones sold were recently subsidized by the network operators – a year ago, it was still three quarters. To counteract, Apple wants to make it easier to give older devices in payment, and cushion the price increases by the strong dollar in some countries more than before for the consumer. Nevertheless, the Group expects sales for the current quarter to be lower than in the same quarter of the previous year.
New scale iPhone users
As previously announced, Apple stopped reporting sales or the average device price. The new benchmark for the company is no longer how many smartphones were sold in a quarter, but the first time mentioned number of 900 million iPhone users. The decision had been criticized by analysts many times. However, smartphone market leader Samsung, which gives insight into the Christmas quarter on Thursday, does not publish its sales figures.
Meanwhile, the services business, which includes the iCloud storage service, the Apple Music streaming service, and the Group’s share of revenue from app sales, was $ 10.9 billion, up 19 percent from the year-ago quarter. In the long-weakening iPad, sales rose 17 percent to $ 6.7 billion with the new, more expensive Pro model. The Apple Watch computer clock, the HomePod loudspeaker, and other devices such as the AirPods earphones increased sales by a third to $ 7.3 billion. The business with Macintosh computers increased by eight percent to the previous record of $ 7.4 billion.
