Apple’s Q4 results
Better than expected sales with 45.5 million iPhones sold, but revenue continues to slide, reveals Caitlin McGarry
Apple sold 45.5 million iPhones in the fourth quarter – also its final quarter of fiscal 2016 – though that includes just two weeks of iPhone 7 sales and only the earliest signs of Samsung’s Galaxy Note 7 catastrophe impact.
The iPhone sales were better than expected. Analysts had forecast 44.8 million phones shipped in Q4, which Apple handily exceeded. The firm made a $9 billion profit off of $46.9bn in revenue in Q4, down year-over-year from an $11.1bn profit off $51.5bn in Q4 of 2015. And while profits and
revenue are down pretty much across the board, Apple is again choosing to focus on its services, a bright spot in the company’s portfolio. Services revenue, which includes iCloud, Apple Music, iTunes, and the App Store, grew 24 percent to $6.3bn in the fourth quarter.
Apple CEO Tim Cook said in the company’s earnings report that the company is “thrilled with the customer response to iPhone 7, iPhone 7 Plus, and Apple Watch Series 2,” as well as the popularity of its services.
Analysts had expected Apple to sell 45 million iPhones, 8.5 million iPads, and 5.1 million Macs, resulting in revenue of $47bn – better than most companies, but down from $51.5bn year-overyear. Apple itself anticipated revenue of $45.5to $47.5bn. The company did both better than expected, with iPhone sales better than anticipated and 9.2 million iPads sold, and worse, with 4.9 million Macs sold. Mac revenue continued its decline with a 17 percent drop year-over-year, a trend Apple may be able to reverse by refreshing its MacBook line-up.
But Q4 is never a stand-out for Apple. Instead, we look to the company’s holiday quarter, where the company is forecasting revenue of $76- to $78 billion in Q1 2017. Apple has watched its revenue grow by leaps and bounds every year since 2001, as VentureBeat noted, when it reported $5.36bn in revenue, but that ended in the fourth quarter of 2016. The company reported its first full yearover-year decline with $215.6bn in revenue for its fiscal year 2016 – clearly not a failure, but still a slight drop from last year’s $233.7bn.