Ondrej Holzman After yesterday's announcements financial results for the third fiscal quarter of 2014 followed by a traditional conference call with top Apple executives answering questions from analysts and journalists. Alongside CEO Tim Cook, Luca Maestri, the company's new CFO, took part in the call for the first time.
Masters in the past weeks replaced the long-time administrator of the apple cash register Peter Oppenheimer and his presence was noticeable, because Maestri spoke with a strong Italian accent. However, he answered journalists' questions like a seasoned man in his place.
At the beginning of the call, several interesting pieces of information were revealed. Apple revealed that more than 20 million people watched the live stream of its WWDC keynote. After that, we moved on to economic matters. The Telegraph reported that iPhone sales in the BRIC countries, Brazil, Russia, India and China, were up 55 percent year-on-year, with revenues in China up 26% year-on-year (more than Apple expected internally).
Interesting information about acquisitions. Apple continues to be very active in this regard, and in this fiscal year, which has completed three quarters, it has already managed to buy 29 companies, five in the last three months alone. Several acquisitions thus continue to remain unknown. Of the last five, we know only two (LuxVue Technology a spotsetter), because Beats, the largest acquisition in the company's history, Apple does not count in the list. Luca Maestri said he expects the deal to be completed by the end of the current quarter.
Macs continue to grow despite the trend
“We had a record June quarter for Mac sales. The 18% year-on-year growth comes at a time when this market is declining by two percent according to IDC's latest estimates," said Tim Cook, adding that Apple is seeing great responses to the latest MacBook Air introduced in April.
Virtual stores are the fastest growing part of the apple business
In addition to Macs, the App Store and other similar services connected to the Apple ecosystem, which Apple collectively calls "iTunes software and services", have also been very successful. "During the first nine months of this fiscal year, this was the fastest growing part of our business," Cook said. iTunes revenue grew 25 percent year-over-year, driven primarily by strong numbers from the App Store. Apple has already paid out a total of $20 billion to developers, double the number announced a year ago.
iPads have disappointed, but Apple is said to have expected that
Probably the most excitement and reaction was caused by the situation of iPads. The year-on-year decline in iPad sales was 9 percent, overall, iPads were sold in the last quarter for at least the last two years, but Tim Cook assured that Apple was counting on such numbers. "Sales of iPads met our expectations, but we realize that they did not meet the expectations of many of you," the Apple executive admitted, trying to explain the drop in sales by, for example, that the overall tablet market went down by a few percent, both in the United States, so in Western Europe.
Cook, on the other hand, highlighted the almost 100% satisfaction with Apple tablets, which is shown by various surveys, and at the same time believes in the further growth of iPads in the future. The latest deal with IBM should help with that. "We think our partnership with IBM, which will provide a new generation of mobile enterprise applications, built with the simplicity of native iOS applications and supported by IBM's cloud and analytics services, will be a huge catalyst in the continued growth of iPads," Cook said.
However, the decline in iPad sales is certainly not a trend that Apple would like to continue. At the moment, although Cook is pleased that there is maximum customer satisfaction with his tablets, he admits that there is still much to be invented in this category. "We still feel like the category is in its infancy and there's still a lot of innovation we can bring to the iPad," said Cook, who, in explaining why iPads are in decline right now, recalled that four years ago, when Apple created the category, hardly anyone — and nor did Apple itself - he did not expect that the Californian company would be able to sell 225 million iPads during that time. So at the moment the market may be relatively saturated, but this should change again over time.
Surprise from China. Apple scores massively here
In general, iPads fell, but Apple can be satisfied with the numbers from China, and not only those related to iPads. iPhone sales rose by 48 percent year-on-year, largely thanks to an agreement with the largest operator China Mobile, Macs also grew by 39 percent, and even iPads saw growth. "We thought it was going to be a strong quarter, but this exceeded our expectations," said Cook, whose company sold $5,9 billion in China, just a few billion dollars less than what Apple earned in Europe as a whole.
