Earlier in January, Apple adjusted its earnings expectations for the holiday quarter just gone. It revised its revenue predictions down by $5 billion – no small sum – resulting in Apple’s share prices taking a hit as investors ran scared.
Well, Apple has now filed its full earnings report, and though the lowered predictions were correct there are plenty of silver linings here for the Cupertino giants.
If you’re not concerned with the nitty-gritty details of Apple’s sales figures, we can summarize things pretty quickly for you: though revenue was down compared with last year’s holiday quarter, it still represented the second-highest quarter ever for Apple’s revenue figures. Hardly a car crash.
In terms of specific products, iPhone sales have slowed – they’re 15% lower than the same period last year – but nearly everything else is on the up for Apple. iPad and Mac sales have increased after new product launches last year, and Apple’s services revenue hit another all-time high. Total revenue for all non-iPhone products was up 19%.
The iPhone decline is due in part to Apple designing the devices to last longer, and providing software updates to keep older iPhones in the running for longer than ever. Tim Cook says this, combined with the discount battery replacement program that ran throughout 2018, has lengthened the average upgrade cycle.
Stockholders may wish Apple would encourage more frequent upgrades, but Cook says he’s happy with this new direction so long as it keeps customers happy. The company is more interested in counting the total iPhones currently in use than focusing on how many were sold in the last three months – and that active iPhones total has recently reached a new peak of 900 million. Wow.