Apple, a tech company based in Cupertino, California, just released its financial report for the last quarter. It showed a drop in sales for the first time in three and a half years. Due to “severe” supply chain issues in China during the Christmas season that caused the delivery of iPhones to be delayed, therefore revenue dropped. Despite the anticipated increase in iPhone sales, Apple CEO Tim Cook said that the company’s revenue for the first quarter of this year would fall short of the same period last year.
Apple’s most recent quarter had overall sales of $117.2 billion, a 5.5% decline from the same time in 2021. The revenue fell short of the analyst’s $121.1 billion projection. $30 billion was the company’s net profit, which was 13.4% less than the prior quarter and barely met forecasts. Tim Cook said that the “difficult” economy would cause sales of Macs and iPads to drop by more than 10%.
Following the release of the financial figures, Apple’s shares dropped by more than 3% in after-hours trade. Amazon and Alphabet, two other big tech companies, also said that they did worse in some of their main markets at the same time as the announcement. The earnings reports from these three companies gave investors a lesson the day after Facebook reported better-than-expected numbers.
Amazon Web Services, which brings in the most money for the company, reported slower revenue growth and no change in profits. Large clients seeking methods to reduce their cloud expenditure caused the pause. Alphabet, the company that owns Google, reported a lower-than-expected income as its advertising revenue fell for only the second time in its history. This was partly due to the strength of the US dollar and comparisons with the huge rise from the year before.
According to Tim Cook, the business has resolved the supply chain issues preventing shipping iPhones to China; the problem is now in the past. Although the company is “strongly positioned” in the PC market, he provided a more cautious forecast for Apple’s Mac computer sales, stating that “it will be a bit hard in the short-term.”
Apple is the only big tech company that has yet to lay off many people when others are making big cuts to their staff. This is despite the company’s disappointing results and forecast. Due to the pandemic’s uncertainty, Apple did not provide any future advice, as it has not done for the last three years.
In an interview, Apple’s finance head, Luca Maestri, said that the company’s “active installed base,” or the total number of devices in operation, had surpassed 2 billion, up from 1.8 billion a year earlier. According to Maestri, sales of iPhones would have increased in the quarter if it weren’t for supply chain issues in China. The effect of the strong US currency, which he also emphasised, was roughly eight percentage points, representing a significant loss of income. Still, it is better than it was three months ago due to the dollar’s recent decline.
Problems with the supply chain in China during the Christmas season slowed down the shipping of iPhones, which caused Apple to lose money for the first time in 3.5 years. Tim Cook, the company’s CEO, predicted that the sales for the first quarter of this year would fall short of the revenue for the same period last year. The business made no announcements on cost-cutting initiatives or job losses and no forward-looking statements. More than doubled from a year ago, there are now 2 billion active devices.
