2023-11-02 23:41:00
San Francisco (AFP) – The iPhone has regained color and Apple has never had so many subscribers to its services, but the American giant once once more recorded a drop in its quarterly turnover, the fourth in a row , and the market fears that the trend will continue into the holiday season.
Weighed down by declining computer sales, Apple achieved $89.5 billion in revenue in the fourth quarter of its staggered fiscal year, a drop of 0.72% year-on-year.
A figure which remains higher than analysts’ forecasts, as does net profit, which came to $23 billion (+11%).
“The performance of the iPhone exceeded our expectations, with a record month of September,” noted Tim Cook, the group’s boss, during a conference call on Thursday. He hailed an “all-time high” in India for smartphone revenues, and records for the summer quarter in various regions, including China.
In total, sales of the flagship reached $43.8 billion for the July-September period, a good billion more than last year, in line with market estimates.
The services activity (App Store application store, Apple Music streaming platform, iCloud remote data storage services, etc.) recorded the best growth with revenues of $22.3 billion, or 16% more. until summer 2022.
“Our paid subscriptions are growing strongly,” said Luca Maestri, the company’s financial director. “We have more than 1 billion paid subscriptions to our services, almost double the number just three years ago.”
Holiday season
As the holiday season approaches, and following several quarters of deceleration in smartphone sales, analysts are watching for signs of consumer appetite, or not, for the new iPhone range presented in September, the iPhone 15 (marketed from 800 dollars for the basic model and 1200 dollars for the most expensive).
Luca Maestri acknowledged that Apple was experiencing supply chain bottlenecks to assemble the iPhone 15 Pro and iPhone 15 Pro Max.
“We are working very hard to get the product into the hands of all customers who ordered it, and we expect to achieve a balance between supply and demand by the end of the quarter, which is reflected in the forecasts,” he detailed.
For the current quarter, he expects a total turnover “similar to that of last year, despite the fact that the quarter has one week less”, and increased revenues for the iPhone.
Apple’s stock, stable before the conference call, lost around 3% following these comments, during electronic trading following the close of the New York Stock Exchange.
The financial director specified that computer sales would recover “significantly”.
Mac sales saw their turnover collapse by more than a third, to $7.6 billion for the past quarter. They suffer from an unfavorable comparison effect, because in the fourth financial quarter of 2022 the American group had made up for production delays linked to the closure of sites in the spring, due to cases of Covid.
Chinese request
The Chinese market, essential to Apple, is of particular concern to investors.
“The biggest negative point of these results is the 2% drop in sales in China, worse than we had expected,” reacted Angelo Zino, analyst at CFRA Research, citing “concerns regarding increasing competitive pressures In the region”.
Tim Cook blamed the decline on unfavorable exchange rates.
At the beginning of September, Apple’s action faltered following an article in the Wall Street Journal according to which China had banned the use of the iPhone in certain administrations and state companies.
“Chinese demand around the iPhone 15 appears to have slowed over the past month following experiencing strong pre-order activity,” noted Dan Ives.
The Wedbush analyst nevertheless remains optimistic for this product, a true “goose that lays golden eggs”, because he estimates that more than 100 million iPhones in China are old enough for their owners to consider purchasing a more recent device , and in particular “Pro” models.
As for connected accessories, the activity achieved almost stable sales during the past quarter, at $9.3 billion.
But they should “slow down considerably” at the end of the year, due to differences between product launch schedules, warned Luca Maestri.
© 2023 AFP
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