Apple Sells 47.8M iPhones as Shares Fall
On Wednesday afternoon, Apple announced its first quarter earnings. The stock of the company took a hit after the earnings announcement. The earnings topped profit forecasts but the sales of iPhone were lower than expected.
Apple’s shares experienced more than 5% fall during the after-hours trading. At the close of New York’s trading, the stock of the company was up by 1.86% to $514.17.
On the earnings call, the CEO of Apple Tim Cook said that these types of results had not been ever reported by any technology company.
Apple said to sell 47.8 million iPhones during this quarter while the number of sales was 37 million during the same period of the last year. The expectation of many investors was the sales of 50 million iPhones. After many rumors circulated around the sales and parts of iPhone, the investors have been waiting eagerly for Apple to announce its earnings.
Rumors have also been circulated about the release of new iPhone in June.
The senior equity analyst of Morningstar, Brian Colello, said that there must be a new product, which is in the works. What matters according to him is with what and when Apple comes with their new product.
The stock price of Apple might have been decreased due to its decreasing the order of iPhone parts last week. According to Colello, it would be interesting to see if Apple could shorten the product cycle and push forward their products in terms of innovation.
Colello said that the competition between Apple and Samsung had been growing intense. Samsung released its ‘Galaxy S 3’ and found enormous response from the consumers at the same time when Apple brought iPhone 4S in last summer.
Apple said on Wednesday that they sold 22.9 million iPads during this period while the number of sales was 15.4 million before a year. On the other hand, the sales of Mac computers decreased a bit compared to 4.1 million this year to 5.2 million a year ago.
Colello said that the sales of iPhones were a little bit disappointing and the record number of iPad sales was even not enough to beat the expectations of the Wall Street. Apple beat forecasts for profit but could not beat the revenue expectations of the Wall Street. The company’s own forecast in revenue was $52 billion.
Cook expressed his excitement over the sales of more than 75 million devices and a revenue of more than $54 billion. He also reaffirmed their confidence on their product pipeline and hoped to produce the best devices in the world.
However, in spite of a little bit disappointment over the stock price down, the company could take pride on the amount of total cash they earned – $137 billion.
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