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Left to its own devices…well, you can let Apple’s earnings report speak for itself.
Apple’s hotly anticipated fourth quarter earnings showed a dip in overall sales for the fourth consecutive quarter, making plain how the macro environment is squeezing device sales. In fact, excluding the iPhone, sales of every other hardware product fell from Q4 2022.
The tech giant posted $89.5 billion in revenue for the quarter, beating expectations, but still a 1% YoY dip. Meanwhile, the company’s net income rose to $23 billion, marking an 11% YoY jump.
“During the September quarter, we continue to face an uneven macroeconomic environment, including foreign exchange headwinds,” Apple CEO Tim Cook said during the company’s earnings call. “We’ve adapted continuously to circumstances beyond our control, while being thoughtful and deliberate on spending.”
iPhone sales were Apple’s saving grace: The company posted $43.8 billion in iPhone revenue for the quarter ending in September. That was “3% higher than a year ago, and a new record for the September quarter,” Cook said during the call.
Notably, the iPhone 15 was released just a few days before the end of the quarter. Looking ahead to the all-important holiday quarter, analysts will be eagerly awaiting signs that the new iPhone can boost Apple’s lineup.
Cook told CNBC that the iPhone 15 is already showing more promise than the iPhone 14 did last year.
“If you look at iPhone 15 for that period of time and compare it to iPhone 14 for the same time in the year-ago quarter, iPhone 15 did better than iPhone 14,” he said, noting that the company’s more expensive offerings, the Pro and Pro Max, “suffered supply constraints because of high demand.”
Still, in the earnings call, Cook said “it’s really too early to call the iPhone cycle…it’s really too early to tell what the upgrade rates will be and what the switcher rates will be.”
And some analysts have predicted the iPhone 15 won’t be the boon Apple needs right now. “We believe this precarious macro [economic] environment, combined with a mature market, will lead to an uninspiring iPhone 15 cycle,” Brian White, a Monness Crespi Hardt analyst, said in a research note before Apple reported.