Tim Cook has revealed Apple’s sales figures over the holiday quarter (between September and December 2016,) as part of a broadly positive earnings call that posited a few interesting talking points besides sales.
After three consecutive quarters of revenue decline, Apple is back on the up thanks to a strong showing for the iPhone 7 and 7 Plus, which helped rack up record iPhone sales of 78.3 million – about 5% more than last year’s holiday quarter. That’s a lot of phones.
iPad sales continued to fall compared to the same period last year, by a whopping 19%. However, this could be a signal that the tablet market on the whole is losing popularity, as Apple still dominates the over $200 tablet category with 85% market share. Meanwhile, Mac sales improved year-on-year despite a mixed reaction to the latest MacBook Pro. Cook said the Apple Watch clocked in record sales, too, though Apple doesn’t reveal specific figures for the wearable.
Apple’s services business continue to draw more money each year, too. That category – which includes iCloud, the App Store, Apple Music, and more – contributed $7.17 billion in revenue last quarter, roughly the same as the sales from the entire Mac range. As noted by 9to5Mac, this makes Apple’s services industry alone the size of a Fortune 100 company.
If you’re interested in the numbers, all this added up to $78.4 billion in revenue for the quarter, beating the previous record of $75.9 billion. It slightly exceeds Apple’s own estimate of around $77 billion. If the largely iterative design of the iPhone 7 was enough to rekindle sales, we could be in for even bigger sales this holiday season after the launch of the rumored iPhone 8.
It wasn’t just sales that Cook spoke about at the earnings call. He also noted that Apple Pay users have tripled over the last year, and that December was the App Store’s best month ever. For a full breakdown of what was said, it’s worth skimming through the transcript of the event.