Apple’s AI-enhanced iPhone made a strong start, pushing quarterly sales ahead of Wall Street expectations, but a modest revenue forecast raised questions about whether that momentum will hold over the holiday sales season.
A decline in China sales during the fourth quarter also concerned some analysts and investors, helping send shares down 1.4 per cent in after-hours trade on Thursday, despite surprisingly large overall profit and revenue in that period.
Total Q4 sales were $94.9 billion, up 6 per cent year over year, beating the $94.5 billion analysts were expecting, according to FactSet.
Chief financial officer Luca Maestri told analysts during a conference call that Apple expects overall revenue to “grow low to mid single digits” during its fiscal first quarter, which ends in December. Analysts had expected revenue growth of 6.65 per cent to $127.53 billion during the quarter, according to LSEG data.
Apple did say it expects double-digit growth in its services business in its first quarter, leading some analysts to ask executives during a call if overall hardware revenue might decline.
Fourth-quarter sales of Apple’s iPhone, the company’s main product, were up 5.5 per cent to $46.22 billion, compared with analyst estimates of $45.47 billion. Other product lines missed expectations.
Apple’s fourth quarter ended September 28, meaning it reflects only a few days of sales of its iPhone 16 series that went on sale September 20.
Apple chief executive Tim Cook told Reuters that iPhone 16 sales grew faster than iPhone 15 sales did a year earlier, with both phones on sale for the same number of days in the fourth quarter.
Apple’s push in the photo and video department took a new turn on Friday as it agreed to acquire the popular image-editing app Pixelmator. Over the years, the Pro version of the app has become a cheaper alternative to Adobe Photoshop.
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Apple has set an “all-time revenue record” in India, Cook said. He said “we can’t wait to bring four new stores to customers in India”, adds Mathures Paul from The Telegraph, Calcutta.
“We continue to be excited by the enthusiasm we’re seeing in India, where we set an all-time revenue record,” Cook said. In early October, Apple announced plans to open four more stores in India, located in Pune, Bengaluru, Delhi-NCR and Mumbai.
