The global chip shortage caught up with Apple: Despite significant growth, the iPhone group missed even more optimistic forecasts from analysts in the past quarter. The bottlenecks in the supply chain and Corona failures in production would have pushed sales by around six billion dollars, said CEO Tim Cook.
In the current quarter, the negative effect will be even greater, warned CFO Luca Maestri in a conference call with analysts. Nevertheless, Apple expects growth for the important Christmas quarter. Only with the iPad is to be expected with less sales in view of the chip problems. Basically, however, “pretty much all of our products are affected,” admitted Cook. Apple is also not immune to the logistics problems that plague many companies, even if the company can contain them with money. “We are seeing a significant increase in transportation costs,” said Cook.
In the past quarter, Apple increased sales year-on-year by 29 percent to around 83.4 billion dollars (71.4 billion euros). However, analysts had expected around $ 1.5 billion more. IPhone sales jumped 47 percent to $ 38.9 billion. But an even better value of $ 41.6 billion was expected on the market. The share fell in after-hours trading on Thursday at times by around three percent.
According to calculations by the analysis company Canalys, Apple increased iPhone sales by 14 percent to 49.2 million devices, thus taking second place in the smartphone market. For the front runner Samsung, the experts calculated a decrease of 13 percent to 69.4 million devices.
Apple is sitting on reserves of $ 191 billion
At the same time, Apple was able to grow in all product lines in the past quarter – even if not strongly in all. For example, sales of Mac computers increased by 1.6 percent to around $ 9.18 billion. With the iPad, however, the proceeds rose by a good 21 percent to 8.25 billion dollars. Apple sees it as a good sign that around half of the buyers bought a Mac or iPad for the first time.
The business with services like Apple Music and iCloud storage grew by a good quarter to $ 18.28 billion. Apple will soon be expanding its subscription offer in Germany to include the Fitness + training service. In total, Apple had 745 million subscription customers at the end of the quarter – 160 million more than a year earlier.
Net income for the fourth fiscal quarter ended September rose 62 percent to $ 20.5 billion. Apple now sits on reserves of $ 191 billion, offset by $ 125 billion in debt.
The production downtimes due to corona lockdowns have now largely been resolved, stressed Cook. The headwind is now almost exclusively due to the shortage of chips. The demand for Apple products is meanwhile “very robust”. The Christmas quarter with the new iPhone is traditionally the most lucrative for Apple.
The chip bottlenecks are currently affecting the entire technology sector. In the corona pandemic with regular work and study from home, the demand for computers and other electronics increased. One consequence is that the capacities of some types of chips and other components are no longer sufficient. The automotive industry was hit particularly hard – various manufacturers had to repeatedly stop production. Apple traditionally has a well-organized supply chain and has so far navigated the chip crisis without any noticeable problems.