Michal Marek
Apple today released financial results for the last fiscal quarter of 2016 and showed how it fared in the market in the last three months. The published numbers are fairly well in line with Wall Street estimates. For the months of July, August and September, 45,5 million iPhones and 9,3 million iPads were sold. The company's revenues reached 46,9 billion dollars, and Apple under Tim Cook thus recorded a year-on-year decline in the third quarter in a row.
In addition, iPhone sales also recorded the first year-on-year decline since 2007, when the Apple phone was launched (the financial year is calculated from the beginning of October to the end of the following September).
Apple reported net income of nine billion dollars and earnings per share of $1,67 for the fourth quarter. Revenues for the entire fiscal year 2016 reached $215,6 billion, and Apple's full-year profit is estimated at $45,7 billion. A year earlier, Apple reported a profit of 53,4 billion dollars. The company thus recorded its first year-on-year decline since 2001.
In addition, the bad news is that Apple's sales of iPhones, iPads and Macs have fallen. A comparison of this year's and last year's fourth quarter looks as follows:
- Profit: $46,9 billion vs. $51,5 billion (down 9%).
- iPhones: 45,5 million vs. 48,05 million (down 5%).
- iPads: 9,3 million vs. 9,88 million (down 6%).
- Macy's: 4,8 million vs. 5,71 million (down 14%).
On the contrary, Apple's services once again did very well. In this segment, the company continued to grow this quarter by a whopping 24 percent, taking the company's services sector well above its previous highs. But the thirty percent year-on-year drop in the Chinese market and the drop in sales of "other products", which include the Apple Watch, iPods, Apple TV and Beats products, are also worth noting.
The good news for Apple and a promising prospect for its future is that the new products led by the iPhone 7 and Apple Watch Series 2 have not had much time to be reflected in the financial results. In addition, the company is also scheduled to announce new MacBooks this week.
The company's finances should thus improve again in the coming quarters. After all, positive expectations are also reflected in the price of shares, whose value has increased by almost a quarter since the publication of the last quarterly results and is around 117 dollars.
Hats off to Apple for growing almost 9 years straight. Other companies could only dream about that. You simply can't grow to infinity, moreover, it was expected from Apple, because there is enormous pressure on it due to some new "wow" technologies/solutions/major update, etc. People simply wait a few months for whatever new comes out, so as not to buy the old one unnecessarily technology.
a slight decline of such a successful company is beneficial not only for customers, but also for itself, it will have to try harder to make products better
Well, I hope that Apple will fail properly and then humbly return to supporting professionals - what they have been showing in recent years with notebooks is laughable - the legendary MacBook is basically just an overgrown phone - nothing can be upgraded, nothing can be repaired - it's hot it's terrible - the battery lasts less and less - the fact that it is currently the thinnest/smallest/with the highest pixel density in the world is a good trap for the flock of sheep of ordinary users (my 6-year-old MBP17 was still better than the latest MBP - maybe tomorrow they will surprise and come with a 4 kg, 3 cm thick plastic with a sufficient display size and power and battery life :) sorry, this is already a joke, but it has a certain logic)
Is a professional recognized by having the same needs and requirements as you?
And even if so, do you have the impression that a handful of similarly focused people will make Apple more money than the incomparably larger herd of the others - sheep in your opinion?
I don't yet know of machines that would run as balanced and reliable as a Mac and therefore of another more functional alternative, so I have the impression that they do it well. But I'm probably wrong.
Well, still, I'm always amazed at how confidently any "professional" (who is characterized mainly by being able to type on a keyboard) knows how to make money - they seem to know it better than what seem to be much more experienced people with access to much more accurate data , people from the most profitable company in the world for a long time and with an overview.... it's a miracle that we have such a thing here... and how much a professional has the desire to demonstrate how his needs are "better" than everyone else's preferences, that's btw also a phenomenon
here it's more about the fact that apple was focused on creative people from the beginning, who also supported it in troubled times not only because of loyalty to the brand, but mainly because when you invest $1000 in hardware and software, you don't want to switch, regardless of the fact that there were not many alternatives at the time. Currently, apple is more and more interested in professional software (the end of Aperture without a replacement, the final cut was significantly cut down a few years ago, etc.) in apple software, it basically leaves no other alternative than to switch to adobe. In the field of hardware, it concerns things like the impossibility of a dedicated gpu in the smaller mb pro, a very long evolution time between individual generations, whether we are talking about the mb pro or a mac that has not been updated for over 3 years. The desktop storage offerings are pretty pathetic. For example, personally, I would very much welcome the option of a 5k imac with a 1tb pci ssd and several tb on classic disks via sata connection for video. And we're also talking about little things like the unavailability of the original apple monitor which has always reigned supreme, the impossibility of an original keyboard with a number pad, etc. These are all things that are very useful for work and apple doesn't offer them because they focus on ios and macbook and another 1mm thinning. To conclude, for Apple it is currently really more profitable to produce lifestyle products, but no fashion lasts forever, so Apple has to count on the fact that people who buy ip and the like more for style will one day buy something else. By forcing professionals to use Adobe programs, Apple cannot keep them in its ecosystem, and it is very likely that many of these users will switch to machines that will be cheaper and at the same time provide higher computing power for Adobe apps. (it's good to see it on the graphics, for example Nvidia is much more suitable for Adobe than "Apple" AMD, which, on the contrary, is suitable for final cut).
No tragedy. Even so, the company's profits are enormous, and such a small notice can only benefit and speed up further innovations in the fight against the competition.
After what they showed in 2 hours yesterday and what rival Microsoft did with their "Surface iMac" they deserve nothing but a drop and I'm truly sorry.
Well, I'm not kidding, people will only buy MACs ;-)
They made iPads really expensive and the iPhone 7 didn't innovate much.