But globally, iPhone sales fell 12 percent to $25.99 billion, after dropping 17 percent in the previous quarter, and was pretty much what Wall Street thought.
This means that iPhone sales dropped to less than half of quarterly revenue for the first time in seven years, but the Tame Apple Press attempted one of its more stupid misdirections.
Instead of highlighting the disaster, it invited shareholders to ignore the old cash cow and instead focus on how much money Apple is making from its iPhones and services.
CEO Tim Cook said the results were “successfully diversifying away from a single product”. He forecast results above Wall Street targets.
This got away from the news that Apple sales in China, which were also low, are still falling – despite significant price cuts.
In mainland China, Cook said the overall number of Apple device users had grown in the fiscal third quarter, helping to increase the market for its services, whose sales were up by more than 10 percent there.
Cook said: “Non-iPhone revenue grew 17 percent. We grew in every category outside of the iPhone.”
However, there were other alarming things mentioned which have been overlooked. Apple has been trumpeting how in the future it will make a fortune from “services”, and while these have been growing 12.6 per cent to $11.46 billion, the figure appears to be flattening out.
The Tame Apple Press admits that it “missed expectations” but “setting a new record”.
Apple said it expects revenue for the current fiscal fourth quarter of between $61 billion and $64 billion, compared with analyst estimates of $61.02 billion.
Analysts expected continued lacklustre iPhone sales until 5G models arrive in 2020.
For the fiscal third quarter ended in June, Apple reported a percent rise in revenue to $53.8 billion and a seven percent drop in earnings per share to $2.18, compared with expectations of $53.39 billion and $2.10 per share.
Apple is still refusing to say how many iPhones it flogged, but in January it said it was 900 million of those being iPhones. Investors used the number, called the installed base, as a proxy for how many subscribers it can gain for its services business.
Cook told investors on a conference call Tuesday that Apple has 420 million paid subscribers to its services and third-party apps. The company has set a goal of 500 million by 2020.
Apple said revenue for its “Wearables, home and accessories” segment that contains devices like the Apple Watch and AirPods was $5.53 billion, compared with analyst estimates of $4.81 billion. One pro-Apple site claimed that the sales of the Apple Watch "more than made up for the drop in iPhone sales".
