quarterly figures
Apple reports third straight drop in sales
Sales of Mac computers fell last quarter. photo
© Kathy Willens/AP/dpa
The iPhone seemed immune to the electronics market slump, but it has now caught up with Apple, too. The group is now benefiting from its longstanding focus on digital services.
Apple’s consolidated revenue fell 1.4 percent year-on-year to $81.8 billion. Bottom line, however, profits rose to around $19.9 billion from $19.44 billion a year earlier.
With the iPhone, Apple’s most important product by far, revenue in the past quarter fell by 2.4 percent to $39.67 billion. On average, analysts had expected slightly higher proceeds of $40 billion. Industry-wide smartphone sales fell by eight percent according to calculations by the analysis company IDC – and Apple closed the gap to Samsung with a stable market share of 16 percent.
At the beginning of the year, iPhone sales were still being driven by pent-up demand. In the Christmas quarter, corona lockdowns in Chinese factories caused bottlenecks for the more expensive and lucrative iPhone 14 Pro. The electronics business is being held back by high interest rates and inflation, among other things.
business with services
Meanwhile, the services business, which includes revenue from the App Store and services such as Apple Music, grew by a good eight percent to a record $21.2 billion. Apple broke the one billion paid subscription mark last quarter.
For the current quarter, Apple expects accelerated growth in the iPhone and in the service business. With Mac computers and iPads, on the other hand, there will be significant declines. However, the comparison is distorted by particularly high sales in the same quarter of the previous year – a consequence of pent-up demand after corona failures.
In the conference call after the quarterly figures were presented, analysts from CEO Tim Cook wanted to learn more about Apple’s plans for artificial intelligence. He again referred to features like fall detection that work with AI and machine learning. At the same time, Cook also said that Apple has been studying so-called generative AI for years, which can create content such as text or images. Programs such as the chatbot ChatGPT or automatic image generators have triggered an AI hype in recent months, in which Apple has not yet made an appearance.
He uses the glasses presented by Apple in early June to display digital content every day, said Cook. The device, called Vision Pro, is scheduled to hit the US market early next year.
Revenue from Mac computers fell from $7.4 billion to $6.8 billion last quarter. PC sales are currently still weak after the boom at the beginning of the corona pandemic. Industry-wide, sales fell by 16.6 percent in the last quarter, according to figures from the market research company Gartner. iPad sales fell from $7.2 billion to $5.8 billion.