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Apple, one of the richest companies on the planet, just posted its quarterly earning for the fourth quarter of 2015, setting a record for the biggest profits ever recorded by a public corporation.
In Q4 2015, the Cupertino-based company posted total revenues of $75.9 billion, generating a profit of $18.4 billion. Even though there has been speculation regarding an imminent decline in Apple’s business, the company’s revenues for the fourth quarter were still the biggest it ever posted, topping last year’s $18 billion in the same period. To top it off, Apple also declared that a total of 1 Billion Apple devices are now in use across the world.
Apart from the company’s latest iPhone 6S and 6S Plus phones becoming available for retail in a number of countries, no major Apple devices were released during the last quarter of 2016 (not counting the relatively niche iPad Pro). However, availability in China did contribute a lot to Apple’s revenues, thanks to record sales in the world’s biggest consumer market.
But what is really interesting is that sales for Apple’s best-sellers were pretty flat; it sold 74.78 million iPhones, roughly the same as of last year. This marks the first time ever in the history of the iPhone since its introduction in 2007 that its sales are falling flat. This also reflects the views of many analysts and industry experts that the explosive iPhone growth is no longer so explosive anymore, signalling a decline in the handset’s popularity. Apple seems to have acknowledged this too and is predicting its Q1 2016 revenue to fall between $50 and $53 billion, considerably below last year’s $58 billion.
Apple may well be the richest and most profitable company in the world right now but if it does go into a decline, even if it is a slow one, it won’t take long for the newly formed Alphabet company (formerly Google) to take over the crown.
Source- Apple Image-ValueWalk
