Apple iPhone 6 Driving Record Profits, Surging In China
It’s been a banner year for Apple, and in spite of new devices such as the Apple Watch, it’s all about the iPhone 6. With the second-quarter earnings set to be released tomorrow, CNET reports that Apple won’t even be including Apple Watch results.
January’s first-quarter earnings report, as previously reported in the Inquisitr, showed the highest-ever profits for the 38-year-old company — in fact, the highest revenue for any company ever — predicated on the sale of 74.5 million iPhones in the three-month period following the release of the iPhone 6 and iPhone 6s. To put that in context, that’s almost enough iPhones sold in three months to equip one quarter of America with a new iPhone, or two for every Canadian, with about 5 million phones left over. In total, the iPhone accounted for almost 70 percent of Apple’s sales, which include tablets and computers.
While the figures aren’t yet in, analysts estimate that Apple has sold some 2 million Apple Watches in the two weeks it’s been available to order. An impressive amount, but far short of iPhone sales in a similar period. It’s also likely that most of those sales were for the less-expensive model of Apple Watch. Not bad, but not entirely the “breakthrough” CEO Tim Cook promised, either.
In some ways, this actually represents something of a problem for Apple. While they’re certainly celebrating their success, their tablet sales have fallen drastically in the last two quarters and relying on a single product is dangerous in the long-term, as competitors like HTC and Blackberry will surely attest. Whether or not they can make the Apple Watch another success story, Apple executives are aware that they need to branch out to maintain their competitive edge.
Of course, as Bloomberg reports, domestic sales possibly weren’t the most important this time around, as iPhone sales in China surpassed those in America for the first time. While Apple doesn’t break down their sales by country, analysts at Creative Strategies LLC believe that they shipped 18-20 million iPhones to China during the second quarter, compared to 14-15 million in America. They credit the increase to the extra demand around the Chinese New Year period and the fact that Asian markets much prefer larger screens, such as are featured on the new iPhone 6 and iPhone 6s.
While it almost certainly won’t be another record-setting quarter for Apple, income is projected at $12.6 billion on revenue of $56 billion, roughly a 30 percent increase from Q2 2014, on-par with the estimated increase in iPhone sales.
[Photo by Spencer Platt/Getty Images]
