Quarterly figures
Apple with cautious forecast for Christmas quarter
Apple expects growth for the iPhone. photo
© Michael Kappeler/dpa
The Christmas business after the launch of new iPhones is traditionally the most important time for Apple. This time the group expects sales to be at the previous year’s level. The iPhone business continues to grow.
In the fiscal quarter that ended at the end of September, Apple made almost $23 billion in profit thanks to demand for iPhones. The new iPhone 15 went on sale in September, which will primarily play a role in the Christmas business.
The iPhone business grew by 2.8 percent year-on-year to $43.8 billion, as Apple announced after the US stock market closed on Thursday. This was within the expectations of investors. Not only did the iPhone bring in almost half of the company’s revenue, it also later gave Apple the opportunity to sell subscriptions for more storage space or music streaming.
In the services business, which includes subscription revenue and income from the App Store, sales jumped by a good 16 percent to $22.3 billion.
Tensions between Beijing and Washington
Sales of Mac computers, on the other hand, fell by a good third to $7.6 billion. Apple pointed out that pent-up demand following previous production bottlenecks drove up sales in the same quarter last year. In addition, a new generation of the popular Macbook Air came onto the market at that time. Apple is now relying on new Macbook Pro models with more powerful chips to boost business.
Apple missed analysts’ expectations with sales in the China segment, in which the group includes business in Taiwan and Hong Kong. Revenues there fell by 2.5 percent to around $15.1 billion. Recently, its competitor Huawei, which was hit hard by US sanctions, had success there again with a new smartphone. There is also the question of how the tensions between Beijing and Washington could affect the company’s business.
The shares fell around one percent in early US trading on Friday. The technology group largely met expectations and once again demonstrated the resilience of its product portfolio in a difficult environment, said analyst Samik Chatterjee from JPMorgan Bank. In an initial reaction, expert Michael Ng from the investment bank Goldman Sachs spoke of an overall solid quarter and particularly praised the significantly increased service revenues.
Overall, quarterly sales fell by around one percent to $89.5 billion. At the same time, Apple increased its profit from $20.7 billion in the same quarter of the previous year to $22.96 billion (21.6 billion euros). The fiscal quarter ran a week longer than a year ago. The current financial quarter will be one week shorter than in the comparable period in 2022. CFO Luca Maestri cited this as one of the reasons why sales will remain at the previous year’s level. On the other hand, a repeat of the results back then would also fill Apple’s coffers properly: the company made almost $30 billion in profits with a good $117 billion in sales.