Apple no longer wants you to know how many iPhones it sells
By Seth Fiegerman, CNN Business
Updated 7:08 PM ET, Thu November 1, 2018
On a conference call with analysts Thursday, Apple CFO Luca Maestri cited a difference in "launch timing" for its new products. In 2017, the priciest mode, the iPhone X, went on sale in October. This year, the higher end models went on sale in September.
In addition, Maestri said "foreign exchange headwinds" could have a roughly $2 billion negative impact on Apple's sales for the upcoming quarter. He also cited macroeconomic concerns in emerging markets.
Dan Morgan, senior portfolio manager at Synovus Trust, called the forecast "discouraging" given broader concerns on Wall Street about slowing global growth, trade tariffs and foreign exchange rates.
Apple's sales for the three months ending in September hit $62.9 billion, up 20% from a year prior, fueled by the higher price tag of the iPhone and continued growth of supplementary services such as Apple Pay and iCloud. The average selling price of iPhones during the quarter rose to $793, a significant bump from $618 a year prior.
Yet sales of Apple's flagship device were essentially flat. Apple sold 46.9 million iPhones during the quarter, coming in slightly below analyst estimates and virtually unchanged from a year ago.
This is the new story for Apple. These days, it's less about how many more iPhones the company can sell from one year to the next than how much additional revenue it can squeeze out of its flagship product through price hikes and the growth of supplementary services like Apple Pay, iCloud and Apple Music subscriptions.
However, the results come at a time when tech stocks, and the market overhaul, have faced significant turbulence. In the past week, Facebook, Amazon and Google released earnings results with lighter sales numbers than Wall Street expected.
Now Apple may be the latest to suffer the curse of the FAANG stocks.
By Seth Fiegerman, CNN Business
Updated 7:08 PM ET, Thu November 1, 2018
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On a conference call with analysts Thursday, Apple CFO Luca Maestri cited a difference in "launch timing" for its new products. In 2017, the priciest mode, the iPhone X, went on sale in October. This year, the higher end models went on sale in September.
In addition, Maestri said "foreign exchange headwinds" could have a roughly $2 billion negative impact on Apple's sales for the upcoming quarter. He also cited macroeconomic concerns in emerging markets.
Dan Morgan, senior portfolio manager at Synovus Trust, called the forecast "discouraging" given broader concerns on Wall Street about slowing global growth, trade tariffs and foreign exchange rates.
Apple's sales for the three months ending in September hit $62.9 billion, up 20% from a year prior, fueled by the higher price tag of the iPhone and continued growth of supplementary services such as Apple Pay and iCloud. The average selling price of iPhones during the quarter rose to $793, a significant bump from $618 a year prior.
Yet sales of Apple's flagship device were essentially flat. Apple sold 46.9 million iPhones during the quarter, coming in slightly below analyst estimates and virtually unchanged from a year ago.
This is the new story for Apple. These days, it's less about how many more iPhones the company can sell from one year to the next than how much additional revenue it can squeeze out of its flagship product through price hikes and the growth of supplementary services like Apple Pay, iCloud and Apple Music subscriptions.
However, the results come at a time when tech stocks, and the market overhaul, have faced significant turbulence. In the past week, Facebook, Amazon and Google released earnings results with lighter sales numbers than Wall Street expected.
Now Apple may be the latest to suffer the curse of the FAANG stocks.
