Apple published its Q3 2013 financials a few hours ago. The Cupertino, California based company made $6.9 billion in profits during the three months to June. Compared to a year ago that's not so hot; it's 22 per cent less and profit margins also shrank from 43 per cent to 37 per cent. Overall though it was a better than expected performance by Apple and shares are therefore up in after hours trading - by four per cent at the time of writing.
Record iPhone sales, iPad and Mac sales dwindle
Looking at Apple's product sales figures for the quarter only the iPhone figures are up. "The Company sold 31.2 million iPhones, a record for the June quarter, compared to 26 million in the year-ago quarter. Apple also sold 14.6 million iPads during the quarter, compared to 17 million in the year-ago quarter. The Company sold 3.8 million Macs, compared to 4 million in the year-ago quarter." The iPod wasn't even worth a mention...
The iPhone sales results are an impressive feat in such a competitive marketplace, sales in the US were actually up by over 50 per cent during Q3. However in the above figures you can see that competitors are eating into Apple's iPad sales and Apple are suffering from the same PC decline as the rest of the industry with the reduced shipments of its Mac computers.
New, innovative products are required
While the new financials and iPhone performance beat expectations an analyst speaking to the BBC said "This was a 'blah' quarter and the story hasn't changed". Adam Sarhan, chief executive of Sarhan Capital elaborated; "Until it delivers a new, innovative product that really adds to both top and bottom-line, I would expect the stock to continue treading water."
In the Q3 financial statement Apple's CEO Tim Cook reminded investors of Apple's strong revenue growth coming from iTunes, Software and Services. He promised that "we are laser-focused and working hard on some amazing new products that we will introduce in the fall and across 2014." Cook also said that he was very excited about the upcoming releases of iOS 7 and OS X Mavericks.
