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Apple reports slowest iPhone growth, yet makes more money than ever

Apple’s earnings report for the last three months of 2015 are in and there’s both good and potentially concerning news for the Cupertino giant.

During the Q1 2016 fiscal quarter, the company smashed its revenue and earnings records for a single quarter, bringing in $75.9 billion in revenue, resulting in profits of $18.4 billion.

Apple also sold more iPhones than it ever has in a single quarter, shifting 74.8m iPhones during the three months encapsulating the release of the iPhone 6S and 6S Plus.

The total sales pushed Apple beyond 1 billion active devices for the first time ever.

However, that’s where the good news is temporarily halted.

While being a sales record for Apple, it reflects almost zero growth compared to the same period last year when Apple sold 74.5m iPhones in total.

That’s the slowest period of growth ever recorded in the history of the iPhone, which was first released in 2007.

Elsewhere, Apple reported sales of 16.1 million iPads, a figure which also includes the recently released iPad Pro
The Christmas period saw iPad sales rise from 9.8 million for the previous three months, but fall from the 21.4 million sold in the corresponding period last year.

In terms of Macs, sales were down but relatively steady, with 5.3m units sold during the last three months of 2015, down slightly from the 5.5m last year.

As is now customary, there was no indication of how the Apple Watch has performed, with Apple citing “competitive reasons.”

The “Other” category, which also features the new Apple TV, Beats headphones and iPods (yes they’re still on sale) brought in revenue of $4.3 billion. The previous record for the category was $3.04 billion, a figure reported in the penultimate quarter of 2014.

That would suggest the Apple Watch received a bump during the Christmas period, as expected, but it’s difficult to be sure with so many other products dumped in the same category.

“Our team delivered Apple’s biggest quarter ever, thanks to the
world’s most innovative products and all-time record sales of iPhone,
Apple Watch and Apple TV,” said Tim Cook, Apple’s CEO.

“The growth of our Services business accelerated during the quarter
to produce record results, and our installed base recently crossed a
major milestone of one billion active devices.”

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