Apple climbs despite fears over iPhone X

APPLE unveiled a 16pc sales surge to £44.9bn as the iPhone maker became the latest tech giant to beat expectations on Wall Street.

The figure was a pleasant surprise for traders, who had been expecting subdued numbers in the first quarter of 2018, and sent shares up 4pc in afterhours trading.

However, the firm sold fewer iPhones than hoped at 52.2m, 300,000 less than market watchers were expecting.

The big surprise was in Apple’s services arm – which includes its music division and app store – where sales grew 31pc to £6.7bn.

This operation is likely to be important in future if the business is to continue growing now that it dominates the global mobile market.

The ‘other products arm’, including the Apple Watch and the firm’s new £320 Homepod intelligent speaker, saw growth of 38pc to £2.9bn.

Investors were also given a widely expected £73.4bn share buyback. Apple plans to return all of its spare cash to investors over the next few years.

The results followed speculation about a sharp slowdown in iPhone sales worldwide, as consumers hang onto their devices for longer rather than upgrading every time a new one comes out.

A survey of British consumers by GfK last month found that sales had dropped 11pc in the past year.

And a string of iPhone suppliers have issued profit warnings, sparking fears of a difficult performance.

The £1,000-plus iPhone X was launched in November to a muted reception and was seen as more of an incremental improvement on previous models than a must- have which offered a huge change.

It came as social media firm Snap posted a £283m loss in disappointing results for the first quarter of 2018.

The firm – which owns instant photo messenger Snapchat – missed analyst expectations with 191m daily users, up 15pc on a year earlier.

And overall revenues were up 54.1pc to £169.5m against estimates of £179.6m.

Wall Street reacted with alarm to the figures, sending shares down as much as 16pc after markets closed.