Apple Reports Q3 FY 2015 Results: Record Results With Strong iPhone And Mac Sales
by Brett Howse on July 21, 2015 7:30 PM EST- Posted in
- Smartphones
- Mac
- Apple
- iPhone
- Financial Results
Today Apple released their earnings for Q3 of fiscal year 2015, which ended June 27th. In what seems to be a never-ending sequence of records, once again, Apple posted a record third quarter. Revenue for the quarter came in at $49.6 billion, up 33% from a year ago. Gross margin was $19.7 billion, also up 33% from Q3 2014. Operating income was up almost 37% to $14.1 billion, and net income was $10.7 billion for the quarter, a gain of 37.8% year-over-year. Earnings per share was $1.85, up from $1.28 in Q3 2014.
| Apple Q3 2015 Financial Results (GAAP) | |||||
| Q3'2015 | Q2'2015 | Q3'2014 | |||
| Revenue (in Billions USD) | $49.605 | >$58.010 | $37.432 | ||
| Gross Margin (in Billions USD) | $19.681 | $23.656 | $14.735 | ||
| Operating Income (in Billions USD) | $14.083 | $18.278 | $10.282 | ||
| Net Income (in Billions USD) | $10.677 | $13.569 | $7.748 | ||
| Margins | 39.7% | 40.8% | 39.4% | ||
| Earnings per Share (in USD) | $1.85 | $2.33 | $1.28 | ||
Apple’s iPhone business has been the primary factor in these record breaking quarters, and the iPhone 6 and 6+ sales continued to be strong. For the quarter, Apple sold 47.5 million iPhones, which is a gain of 35% in units. Even more impressive is that these 35% more units resulted in 59% more revenue, with iPhone sales totalling $31.4 billion for this quarter alone.
Mac sales have also been strong, and while Apple has generally outpaced the PC market in sales growth for a while, Apple saw an additional 5% in Mac unit sales for Q4 compared to Q3, and 9% from a year ago. This is at a time where the rest of the PC market is contracting, so Mac sales were an impressive 4.8 million units, with revenue of just over $6 billion for the quarter. The resurgence of the Mac has been quite the rise, with Mac revenue being eclipsed quite a bit by the iPad not very long ago. Times have changed though and Apple’s PC business is currently the only one that has seen an increase in sales according to the reports floated around in the last couple of weeks.
iPad sales though are not so rosy. The iPad sales were very strong, and while sales are not exactly terrible, the number of units being sold has been dropping for some time. Much debate has been about why this is, but certainly owners of the iPad have not felt the need to refresh their devices anywhere nearly as quickly as phones. For the quarter, there were 10.9 million iPads sold, which resulted in revenue of $4.5 billion. The number of units sold is down 13% from Q2, and down 18% year-over year.
| Apple Q4 2014 Device Sales (thousands) | |||||
| Q3'2015 | Q2'2015 | Q3'2014 | Seq Change | Year/Year Change | |
| iPhone | 47,534 | 61,170 | 35,203 | -22% | +59% |
| iPad | 10,931 | 12,623 | 13,276 | -13% | -18% |
| Mac | 4,796 | 4,563 | 4,413 | +5% | +9% |
Services, which include iTunes sales, AppleCare, Apple Pay, and will include Apple Music in the future, saw a nice jump as well with just over $5 billion in revenue for the quarter. This is up 1% from last quarter, and up 12% from last year.
“Other Products” which is Apple TV, Apple Watch, Beats, iPods, and accessories had a big quarter, and while individual numbers were not announced, it is likely due to initial sales of the Apple Watch which came out in the quarter. For Q3, this group had sales of $2.6 billion, up 56% from last quarter and up 49% year-over-year. Likely most of the increase can be attributed to the Watch, but without knowing average selling price, it would be pretty difficult to try and extrapolate unit sales without more information.
| Apple Q2 2015 Revenue by Product (billions) | |||||
| Q3'2015 | Q2'2015 | Q3'2014 | Revenue for current quarter | ||
| iPhone | $31.368 | $40.282 | $19.751 | 63.2% | |
| iPad | $4.538 | $5.428 | $5.889 | 9.1% | |
| Mac | $6.030 | $5.615 | $5.540 | 12.2% | |
| iTunes/Software/Services | $5.028 | $4.996 | $4.485 | 10.1% | |
| Other Products | $2.641 | $1.689 | $1.767 | 5.3% | |
This pipeline post is quite a bit shorter than the Microsoft earnings, but for all of the right reasons. There is less to say when things are going as well as they are for Apple right now. iPhone sales are still a huge part of their balance sheet, and seem to have no sign of slowing down. People obviously wanted a larger iPhone and sales have skyrocketed since the iPhone 6 and 6+ were launched. But I think we were all expecting this based on past performance. I think what is most interesting is how much of the PC market Apple has managed to chip away with Mac sales, which are up an amazing 9% when the rest of the market contracted.
For Q4, Apple is expecting revenue of $49 to $51 billion, with a gross margin of 38.5 to 39.5%.
Source: Apple Investor Relations
Facebook
Twitter
RSS
83 Comments
View All Comments
jjj - Tuesday, July 21, 2015 - link
Mac sales are doing ok only because Apple had virtually no share and no presence outside the US and maybe a couple of other markets where they were not at 0. The gain in image also helped them gain a bit of share in the US. Plus any Apple buyer is by definition spending without thinking so they upgrade more often.The premium segment where Apple (can't call it high end because Macs are not that) also erodes less since folks that are more careful with their spending are the ones buying other devices instead of PCs. If you factor in all that, Mac sales are not doing well and are just in line with what you would expect (bellow that this quarter since they had Macbook shortages).
As for the Watch units , anyone with a clue and not determined to lie about it will put them at max 2.5 million units but a more realistic number is 2.1 million units. Q1 all other was actually soft on expected ipod poor sales (that's not much revenue) and something that most ignore, poor ipad accessories sales. Problem is that ipod wouldn't drop much from Q1 to Q2 ,same for ipad accessories since those go with ipad sales.
Apple also made some funny claims about how June was the strongest month for the watch. Ofc it was since production was the highest and they account for the sale only when they ship . They could even afford to expand to new markets in June.
Q3 will be better,they'll expand the watch to more markets and dump a lot of inventory in the channel and then Q4 is where folks will buy it as a gift. After that it will be interesting and they need to have a much much better product early next year.
defferoo - Wednesday, July 22, 2015 - link
really? your assumptions are plain wrong. "any apple buyer is by definition spending without thinking so they upgrade more often"? okay, so if somebody values build quality, Mac OS X, and the Mac user experience, they aren't thinking? stop being so arrogant, there are many Mac owners who use the same Mac for many years because Mac OS X doesn't stop working after a couple years and the build quality is high. I haven't purchased a new computer in 6 years, and that's because I use a Macbook Pro. I'm certain I would have had to replace my laptop by now if I had purchased a Windows laptop.Sure, Macs aren't for everyone, but just because they aren't for you doesn't mean other people are wrong. Go troll somewhere else.
Michael Bay - Wednesday, July 22, 2015 - link
Ten-year IBM pro notebook owners are laughing quietly.xype - Wednesday, July 22, 2015 - link
I bet the 10 year IBM pro notebook owners are loving all the software updates and security fixes their Windows XP is getting lately.Morawka - Wednesday, July 22, 2015 - link
we are using windows 10. runs good on 1gb ram, how about Yosemite? hows it run on 1gb ram?xype - Wednesday, July 22, 2015 - link
Windows 10 on a 10 year old CPU and 1GB RAM? Unless you’re running simple terminal/non-GUI apps, I would like to see some proof of "runs good". Because "starts up" does not equal "runs good".OS X doesn’t have an issue with 1GB of RAM. It’s the apps that do. And short of running with a fast SSD, I don’t believe you can do much "desktop computing" with 1GB of RAM these days.
close - Wednesday, July 22, 2015 - link
I love a good flame but let's be honest, Yosemite on a 2008 iMac (first gen Al iMac) with 4GB of RAM and no other upgrades runs like crap. Windows 10 on a similar configuration runs great (memory-wise). And @xype, whip out that Yosemite installer, run it on 1GB of RAM and let me know how you came up with your conclusions.I don't really care if it's the apps or the OS gods. You can't even install MacOSX without enough RAM and you certainly can't work. Even at 4GB it's a test of patience.
Sure, build quality is great if you don't draw the short straw with batches that have one problem or another (screen, GPU, etc). And the "Mac user experience" is something so subjective that referencing it in such a discussion sounds plain ignorant. Do you like simple things that work? Well enjoy the paper-pad experience. ;)
And just as a side note, I appreciate my 6-7years old Lenovo X200 then I do my 1 year old X1 Carbon gen2. All computers nowadays are built to be replaced in 2 years... They fail physically and functionally (like devices with 4GB of soldered RAM).
tim851 - Wednesday, July 22, 2015 - link
My gf is running Yosemite on a MacBook Air from 2010 with 2 GB of RAM. She multitasks the shit out of it. How is 4 GB "testing your patience"? I call bullshit!iWatchHogwash2 - Thursday, July 23, 2015 - link
Some further important Apple News not mentioned here earlier on:Maybe some idiot will buy them
Apple mysteriously has enough iWatches on hand to start putting them in its own stores.
The iWatch went on sale six weeks ago and at the time Apple did not think it would ever have enough to put it in its own shops. The original plan was to flog them online and in fashion stores, however and Jobs' Mob thought it would never have enough to meet the crushing demand for an out-of-date wearable which was more expensive than anything else on the market.
So it appears that suddenly Apple has enough. Of course the Tame Apple Press is trying to keep the story about a shortage going. Potential buyers must first reserve their device online, and some models are still out of stock.
But the sport models, which are most popular and the cheapest, are available across the country, while others can be bought in Apple's flagship shops, such as those in London and Manchester.
In order to reserve your device, you must pick the Watch you want to buy, choose a store to pick the device up and then choose a time to go and buy it.
You can also order the home delivery, but it's not recommended as it takes more than three weeks for the shipment to be delivered.
The most expensive models, such as the 38mm yellow gold model with red modern Buckle strap, are still unavailable. As Apple said last week, the 42mm Watch in Space Black with the metal link bracelet is unavailable at all stores for now.
Source:
http://www.fudzilla.com/news/wearables/38018-apple...
Apple has another lemon
It is turning out exactly as we said – sales of Apple's latest cure for cancer have slumped to a shadow of their initial "glory."
While the Tame Apple Press and a big chunk of analysts sung praises for the iWatch, claiming it would sell 70 million in its first year. We pointed out that the gizmo was nearly two years out of date and lacked most of the software which would make it moderately useful and if it succeed it was a triumph of user stupidity and marketing.
Lately analysts have been slowly withdrawing the enthusiastic sales figures they gave the watch, and now a new survey has shown that sales have fallen by 90 per cent.
Apple is selling fewer than 20,000 watches a day in the US since the initial surge in April, and on some days fewer than 10,000. This is not too bad, but it does suggest that most people who wanted an iWatch have one, and existing users are not managing to win many converts amongst their friends to make it take off. For the record to make the 70 million figure apple would have to sell 195,000 a day.
Data collected by Slice Intelligence show that Two-thirds of the watches sold so far have been the lower-profit "Sport" version, whose price starts at $349, according to Slice, rather than the costlier and more advanced models that start at $549. Apple's gold "Edition" model priced at $10,000 or more has only sold 2,000 of them have been sold in the US.
The figures are based on the electronic receipts sent to millions of email addresses following purchases. The company conducts market research on behalf of consumer-goods companies, among others, many of them in the Fortune 500.
All up though these figures are not bad, but they are not the sort of numbers which Apple needs to convince its investors that it can make mega sales any more. With sales drying up in China, Jobs mob will not have a good bottom line this year.
Source:
http://www.fudzilla.com/news/wearables/38173-apple...
They will be great honestly
The Tame Apple Press is gearing up to spin tomorrow's financial results, even though there are some suggestions that they will not be that great.
Going through all the pre-result articles we have detected a common theme – the results will be great. If they are not great the magazines and newspapers will:
1. Say that it is a slow period anyway because Apple has not got any product out.
2. Blame the slowing Chinese economy rather than the failure of Apple to interest the Chinese.
3. Use the phrase "blockbuster iPhone" even if sales start to fall.
4. Fail to mention the failure of the iPad or the iWatch.
5. Quote figures for the year rather than the quarter.
6. Compare everything to Samsung (which had a shitty year).
Below is a quote from CNet so you can see what we mean:
But CNet has a problem. The reason that Apple has done well at all is because of sales in China. In April Apple told us that it made a killing in that country. Word on the street is China sales did not hold up for the rest of the year, suggesting that those who could afford an Apple bought it, and those who couldn't, which is the majority of the country didn't. Apple's Chinese problems are unlikely to be because of the county's economic woes either, it is just that the market for overpriced phones in China is limited.
Earlier this month, Gartner revised its annual growth forecast for smartphones downward because it sees the market as saturated
The other issue is how poorly Apple's iWatch sales have been going. It is hard to see how Apple can get away from this one other than by being creative with how it calculates the sales. The Tame Apple Press has been getting bizarre about the watch in the face of the fact that campaigned for people to buy the white elephant. Time magazine actually ran a story about how 96 per cent of iWatch owners are happy they bought it. A bizarre figure that the rag has to qualify by admitting that the more you knew about technology the less like you were to be satisfied with the iWatch. However 96 per cent is just plane impossible.
Slightly saner analysts think that the iWatch will sell very few and it might need some time However Apple might have to fess up that its numbers were not what the Tame Apple Press claimed they would be. It will also have to face slumping iPad sales.
Source:
http://www.fudzilla.com/news/38274-apple-press-gea...
Tame Apple Press is spinning like a mad thing
Yesterday we warned the Tame Apple Press would be spinning what were expected to be bad results and we were right.
The results were simply:
• Apple made much less than Wall Street expected.
• IPad sales are disappearing faster than expected.
• IWatch sales so pitiful that Apple did not want to announce them.
• IPhone sales up, but dependent on a saturated and dying Chinese market which is about to turn.
These are results of a company which has run out of ideas and is coasting on the good name of a single product. Analysts were furious and shareholders dumped their shares believing that Apple has peaked.
But you would not get that if you read the papers this morning. Instead you hear how Apple made "boatloads of money" and it was incredible that Wall Street failed to understand how well Jobs' Mob was doing.
One of the saddest tries to baffle with bullshit came from Lance Ulanoff at Mashable who tried to prove the iWatch was a success even though Apple was too embarrassed to announce the sales figures. Ulanoff managed to "prove" (and we use the term loosely) that Apple managed to sell slightly more than a million watches which he claimed proved it was a success.
The only problem was that Apple, Analysts and the Tame Apple Press were telling us that it would sell 40-60 million and even the most negative was saying 10 million.
Apple did better in China in this quarter than we expected. Apparently though most of its sales were in the cash rich and more western Hong Kong market rather than the poorer mainland. Signs from China are that both markets are saturated for high end smartphones. Besides the Chinese economy is depressed and fewer people have money. Even if Apple brings out a new phone, it will have a harder sell in China.
What the results do show is that Apple is now dependent on the iPhone and has nothing up its sleeve that can replace it. This is fine for now, if you see the glass as half-full and the Tame Apple Press does.
But we are seeing huge problems for smartphones in general and high end ones especially. China, which Apple depends on, is seeing high end phones being decimated by cheaper, lower margin phones which much do the same. These phones are filtering out to the West where they are also making more sense.
Smartphones are widely predicted to go the same way as the PC market, once everything matures.
Apple fanboys are expecting something which Jobs' Mob always claimed – innovation. But Apple's problem here is that it is not an innovator, it is a copier and no one else has come up with something that could be the next big thing.
Wearables, the watch, was always going to be too niche, something that Tim Cook admitted yesterday. He said the watch did better than some in the company expected, in other words some in the company thought that no one would be stupid enough to buy it. Fortunately Apple found a million idiots who are stupid enough to buy a dog turd if it has an Apple logo on it.
These results are financially not bad, but they show a company that has stalled and has nowhere to go. Spinning that news by the Tame Apple Press to preserve the reality distortion field will not help Apple. It needs to get a grip on itself and come up with a better plan.
Sorce:
http://www.fudzilla.com/news/38286-we-were-right-a...
Admits that others are doing the same things cheaper
Apple's latest wave of adverts seem dedicated to the fact that its rivals are producing products that are the same and much cheaper
The punchline of the advert is "If it's not an iPhone, it's not an iPhone" which is pretty daft. It is a bit like saying "if it is not a pig, it is not a pig." It is equally not good value either.
The advert is supposed to show how the app-based ecosystem of the iPhone is brilliant, but it accidently shows how close its rivals are to Apple's product.
It is showing a real fear in the Cargo cult that users are finding it difficult to see the difference between Apple and its rivals – other than the logo and the inflated price tag.
Apple's rival products, are now better built, better-featured but much cheaper. This is leaving Apple having to define itself by what it's not, rather than by what it is. Unfortunately all it has is the logo and a more expensive price tag.
Apple appears to be in fear of its rivals, even if iPhones are still making money. More than 54.2 million have been shipped up to June 2015.
The problem is that Apple used to be able to tout itself as an innovator. It was not true of course, it ripped off the same ideas that other people had and stuck them in a nice box, but that was enough to carry it off.
But since 2011 it has just been tarting up its own products and when it could not do that any more it started tarting up other people's. The iWatch fiasco was so bad because the company got its product onto the market too late to claim it invented it and the whole thing fell apart.
There is a feeling, even amongst fanboys, that things would have been different under Steve Jobs. They might be right, although I doubt that. He might have convinced a few more people that they were wearing a cure for cancer, but he was running out of ideas. The iPad was not revolutionary it was just a big iPhone.
So it is obvious an iPhone is an iPhone, it is just that it is not much better than anything else on the block for half the price.
Source:
http://www.fudzilla.com/news/mobile/38277-apple-ad...
That is how miserable the market is
Despite the poor figures Apple Watch is the best player in the awful wearables market.
It took Google more than six months to cross the 100,000 figure Android Wear installations and Apple Watch has definitely beating these numbers easily. Google has Samsung, LG, Motorola as the predominant players and according to Strategy Analytics only Samsung managed to sell significant numbers.
The problem is that the Smart Watch market is slow especially the Android Wear one. But it is taking off fast. A year ago in Q2 2014 Samsung sold 0.7 million of its watches and everyone else managed to sell 0.3 million watches. There was total of million smartwatches sold in Q2 2014 in a wide range of operating systems.
A year later, in Q2 2015 Apple’s iWatch and sold 4 million in three months. This is not a bad number as Samsung sold 400,000 watches while all others managed to ship 900,000 in the whole quarter.
What this means is that Apple instantly captured 75.5 percent of total market in Q2 2015. Samsung used to have 73.6 percent of market in Q2 2014. In Q2 2015 it dropped to 7.5 percent. This huge drop was thanks to a great success of Apple Watch.
All others dropped a market share from 26.4 percent in Q2 14 to 17 percent in Q2 2015. Total growth of the smart watch market year over year is 457.3 percent.
Strategy Analytics admitted it did not use “real numbers” but felt its guess was close to the truth.
Source:
http://www.fudzilla.com/news/wearables/38295-apple...
Mind the Gap in expectations
The launch of Apple Pay in the UK has been a complete disaster, the software does not work, the system charges you double, and some leading banks do not support it yet.
HSBC was named and shamed for not having the service ready and had hate mail from fanboys as a result. For those who came in late HSBC has won awards for the security on its bank accounts but for some reason it has been slow in allowing Apple pay into its systems.
HSBC was originally listed as one of Apple's banking partners at launch, but has since said its account holders won't be able to use Apple Pay until later in July, now confirmed as July 28. The delays frustrated Apple fanboys who flooded twitter to vent their spleen.
However it turns out that HSBC's delays might have saved its customers from losing a pile of dosh.
Transport for London has warned tube, train and bus passengers paying with Apple Pay on iPhones and Apple Watches not to let their batteries run flat or they could get stuck at gates and face penalty fares.
Apple Pay only works if a device has power. It warns that, if the battery runs out in the middle of a journey, a user will not be able to tap out, which means they could be charged a maximum fare.
It also warns that receiving a call while attempting to touch into or out of the gates will also cause issues, and that users with multiple cards on their account must remember to use the same one or potentially be charged twice.
Early adopters have also complained about the speed of Apple Pay compared to Oyster or contactless. Difficulties using Touch ID to authenticate payments combined with the speed at which a payment is recognised have been causing problems for some.
In short Apple did not figure all this out before launch and priming its Tame Apple Press to sing its glory. However the BBC could not even get it buy a cup of coffee. The Beeb put it down to teething troubles, but given the system has been running in the US for a while you wouldn't expect to see so many problems like this.
Brandwatch, a company which calls itself an "enterprise social intelligence platform", and which monitors social networks to find out how twitterers feel about things.
The company compiled a list of 26,000 online mentions of the Apple Watch UK launch, and so assembled an unwilling focus group of 15,789 people.
It is fairly clear that people are struggling with the technology. Brandwatch found that ten per cent of posts are about how to get it to work, with Brandwatch saying that:
Apple Pay is not getting much traction in the US, where the big retailers are thinking of coming up with their own ideas. Rival payment services are now starting to look rather more useful.
Source:
http://www.fudzilla.com/news/mobile/38271-apple-pa...
ingwe - Wednesday, July 22, 2015 - link
I'm running Yosemite on a 2008 MacBook Pro and it is running well. I'm sure it wouldn't run with 1GB of RAM but with 4 GB my is doing well