Apple Has First Earnings Decline In More Than A Decade (go.com)

An anonymous reader writes: Apple has announced its first-ever decline in revenue in the past 13 years as its iPhone sales have slowed down. Apple posted quarterly revenue of $50.6 billion and quarterly net income of $10.5 billion. Last year, the company posted revenue of $58 billion and net income of $13.6 billion. The reason Apple has been so successful is because of the iPhone, which was first released in 2007. What goes up must come down -- and we're starting to see that now. The success of the iPhone is starting plateau and ultimately decrease now that consumers are finding less of a reason to upgrade to the latest and greatest smartphone. Apple CEO Tim Cook pointed to weakening currencies worldwide as one of the obstacles the company would face as iPhone sales were up less than 1 percent year-over-year last quarter. Gene Munster, managing director and senior research analyst at Piper Jaffray, told ABC News, "This has been anticipated for three months now. The reason is nothing [that] is wrong with the iPhone." Munster said this is not worrisome to Apple and that iPhone sales will likely increase by the end of the year when the next iPhone(s) is released.

Comments

Without Steve Jobs

[tomhath]

Apple is living on borrowed time. They need to come out with something disruptive, but all they can do is incremental upgrades.

Re:Without Steve Jobs

[Anonymous Coward]

This is probably true. However, the broad market is down across the board. Everyone seems to be warning except banks. That is not a good sign.

Re:Without Steve Jobs

[macs4all]

Only in America can you hear people complain that a company only had a net income of 10.5 billion dollars. For one quarter. Yeah, poor Apple. Whatever will they do.

what a moronic post. I would think a company that misses their earnings and profit targets would make shareholders upset in ANY country. It means either the company has mislead them or the market has overvalued them, either way it means the shareholders are getting the short end of the stick, Name me one country where people that lose money don't complain?

Or, it means that there is a natural cycle to the sales of ANY product, and that the iPhone is transitioning to a more "mature" product, where the sales figures more track general ups and downs of the market than the always-upward trajectory of a new product.

Two words

[Anonymous Coward]

Two words: Soldered RAM.
For me that's more than enough.

Re:Worse than the earnings decline in my eyes ...

[idji]

When a company buys back it owns stock it means they are convinced (or want to convince the market) that they are undervalued and that that can earn more by doing this and waiting for the market to catch up than by acquisitions and that they have convinced the stockholders that this is a better idea than paying it out to the stockholders=owners as dividends. It does not necessarily mean that they don't know how to invest.

Or...

[Anubis350]

Or they're sitting on such a huge pile of cash that any investing in anything that would eat a substantial portion of it would fundamentally change their business or attract anti-trust problems

Its the politics, stupid...

[Texmaize]

I know I will catch hell for this, but I will say it anyway. The problem is that Tim Cook is by far more interested than being a gay/liberal activist, than being a CEO of an innovative company. If you look at the various stories about him and apple over the last few years, you will see it is alway about the politics, not making "insanely great" doodads.

Many on Slashdot give him a pass, because you like the causes he supports. At the same time, you bemoan the fact that the new iMac mini was actually worse than the old one, computers are not updated nearly enough, computers are not powerful enough for Oculus Rift, or even many games, features such as ram expansion have been downgraded, the new GUI is a backwards step, programs like pages and iMovie are stagnant, programs like Aperture have been cancelled, the iwatch was just plain silly, and the iPhone changes are just plain underwhelming. All this can be now said about a company that a decade ago, saw a world filled with CD players, and figured out how to bring your entire music collection with you at once....all with a slick interface.

Apple used to be about being transformative. Now it is just about being transgendered. I miss insanely great.