Well folks, Apple has just put up some mixed numbers in its fiscal Q4 2013 earnings release $37.5 billion in revenue and $7.5 billion in net...
This time around Apple sold 33.8 million iPhones (which it notes is a record for Q4), 14.1 million iPads and 4.6 million Macs during the quarter.
To put that in perspective, the average analyst prediction was for Apple to sell a grand total of 33.4 million iPhones in Q4, along with just under 14 million iPads and about 4.26 million Mac computers.
Meanwhile, Apple sold 31 million iPhones, 14.6 million iPads, and 3.8 million Macs last quarter, and 26.9 million iPhones, 14 million iPads, and 4.9 million Macs in the year-ago quarter.
Phew.
So yes, if we’re taking those averages as gospel, Apple managed to come out ahead on every one of them. Despite that big iPhone sales boost (thanks in part to the recent launch of the iPhones 5s and 5c, iPad sales are essentially flat year-over-year we’ll see if that trend sticks once those refreshed models start hitting shelves in November.
The nature of the electronics lifecycle means that a cyclical dip or lull is to be expected though with the holidays right around the corner, the company’s Q1 2014 earnings are going to be where the real money is.
Speaking of dips, we saw a few of them last quarter: Apple sold just 14.6 million iPads back then which was heralded as the first yearly iPad sales decline ever, and (perhaps more notably) the average selling price of the iPhone dipped from $613 to $580 sequentially.
It’s not exactly a shock then to see that both of these trends are still in effect, especially when it comes to iPhone ASPs. Apple makes it a point to never break down iPhone sales numbers by model, so at this point it’s tough to say how many 5s and 5c units have been sold (a situation that’s compounded by iPhone 5s supply constraints and the frequent assertion that people aren’t really buying the 5c).
While iPhone ASP is down to $577 this time, though, it seems that the popularity of the higher-priced iPhone 5s has managed to keep the figure from eroding too much.
And what of the iPods? The music players (which eventually evolved into much, much more) were one of Apple’s first runaway hits, but the company generally seems happy to relegate them to the background.
They haven’t been called out in an earnings release for the past six months, and they were conspicuously absent when Apple updated the rest of its hardware portfolio just in time for the holiday shopping frenzy. In case you were curious, though, Apple moved a hair under 3.5 million of them in Q4.
This is a developing story, please refresh for updates.
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