Fewer iPhones sold: delivery problems depress Apple's quarterly figures
Apple's Q1 figures are five per cent worse than last year. Among other things, problems in the supply chain shortly before the Christmas business are to blame.
117.2 billion US dollars in revenue, 30 billion in profit: these are the figures reported by Apple for the first quarter of 2023 - in case you're confused by the name: this is the fiscal Q1, which covers the months of October to December 2022. Revenue was down five per cent on the previous year. This is the first decline since the start of the coronavirus pandemic. There are several reasons for this
In November iPhone supplier Foxconn struggled with mass cancellations following restrictive lockdowns and subsequent protests and violent riots. This led to an alleged production loss of 30 per cent. As a result, there were delivery problems with the iPhone 14 Pro during the important Christmas period for Apple. Revenue from iPhone sales fell by eight per cent compared to the previous year.
Missing new Macs leave a hole
Mac sales fell even more sharply, by 29 per cent. However, this is not surprising, as Apple launched its new MacBook Pro with M1 Pro and M1 Max chips in the same quarter of the previous year. This year, however, things remained quiet in the computer division in autumn. The MacBook Air and Mac Studio were also already several months old at this point. It wasn't until January 2023 that the Californians released the new generation of their Pro laptops with M2 chips.
Sales in the "Wearables" category also fell by eight per cent. This includes the various models of the Apple Watch and AirPods. Apple was only able to increase sales of tablets by 30 per cent thanks to new iPad models. In the Services segment, revenue rose to an all-time high - users paid 20.8 billion US dollars for services such as Apple TV+ and iCloud between October and December. Tim Cook also announced a "significant milestone" of two billion active devices. "While we continue to operate in a challenging environment, we are proud to have our best range of products and services ever. We remain focussed on the long term and are guided by our values in everything we do," the CEO is quoted as saying in the press release.
It will be exciting to see whether Apple manages to successfully establish a new product category this year: According to rumours, the company will soon unveil its first mixed reality headset. Other manufacturers have had little success with similar devices so far. Meta's high-end Quest Pro headset suffers from many teething problems and the high price, and pre-orders for Sony's PSVR2 are also reportedly falling short of expectations.
Cover image: Samuel Buchmann
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