Originally published at: http://appletalk.com.au/2017/02/thursday-morning-news020217/
If there was something wrong with Apple’s products, or how the company is perceived, you wouldn’t know it by looking at Apple’s financials. Apple reported record Q1 2017 financial results yesterday, with $78.4 billion in revenue and $17.9 billion in profit. Apple CEO Tim Cook says they sold more iPhones than ever before, with revenue records also being set for the iPhone, services, Mac, and the Apple Watch.
The graphs from Six Colors give us the bigger picture. While Apple’s first quarter has always been a big one, this one was the biggest yet. The average selling price of Macs and iPhones is up over previous quarters. The iPhone still accounts for 69% of Apple’s revenue, and international sales made up 64% of Apple’s revenue for the quarter.
But wait, hold on a second. Perhaps Apple’s financials were helped by a “calendar quirk” that resulted in a 14-week quarter instead of the usual 13. Not so, says Apple CFO Luca Maestri. The Verge writes that even though Apple had an extra week to record sales in the quarter gone by, a number of factors offset the extra days. They also say that no quarters are the same, which makes comparing quarterly financial results an interesting exercise.
As usual, iMore has the full transcript of the conference call about Apple’s financial results. The remarks from Apple’s CEO and CFO paint a positive picture for Apple’s current financial position, and answers to questions such as Apple’s position for the US dollar against other currencies and emerging markets make for some good discussion points.
Marco Arment points out two graphs to make his point about the iPad and it’s position as the future of computing (or not, as the case may be). If the iPad wasn’t the future of computing, then maybe we’d be seeing the kind of graphs we’re seeing, and the Mac would be largely unaffected.
Indeed, no records were set by the iPad lineup last quarter, even though basically every other major Apple product category did. Apple still commands the high-end tablet market, and people are still buying iPads for the first time, and they love them, so there’s arguments for both sides of the iPad is failing statement.
IMore’s analysis of the iPad issue is that the iPad hit the ceiling very fast, and is now going through a period of stagnation. It all seems plausible enough: tablets weren’t a thing until the iPad, but now that the iPad has been out for seven years, pretty much everyone who wanted one has one, and they don’t need to be replaced every year.
Cook also describes the 5.5-inch iPhone 7 Plus as the most popular “plus” model Apple has ever released. It seems kind of obvious, given that it’s also the first one that has had some compelling feature over its regular-sized sibling.
There’s a firmware update out for AirPods, and minor bug fixes seems to be the main feature. Installation of the firmware update is automatic if your AirPods are in their charging case, the charging case is being charged, and there’s an iPhone with the firmware update downloaded, in close proximity, and connected to Wi-Fi.
A major update to AutoSleep has a better setup process, as well as changes which makes it easier for users to understand the data logged by the app.