San Francisco, – Apple today presented its financial results for the first half of the year, in which profits were down 7% due to the drop in sales of iPhone phones, which were partially cushioned by a record turnover in their area of services.
In total, Apple earned between October and March 31.526 million dollars on an income of 142.325 million (4.75% less), of which more than half came from the iPhone (58.3%), followed by services (15.7%), Mac computers (9%), wearable technology, watches and accessories (8.7%) and iPads (8.2%).
The trends between the two main sources of revenue, however, are completely opposite: while iPhone sales fell 15.8% year-on-year due to the saturation of the mobile market worldwide and the slowdown in China , billing for services grew by 17.6% and reached a record of 22,325 million dollars.
This last data was the one that the leaders of the company made an effort to highlight this Tuesday, since the services are the great bet of future of Apple, that until now had always focused much more on the hardware.
“Our results show the strength of our base of 1,400 million active devices, since we have achieved a record in terms of services,” said the company’s CEO, Tim Cook.
In the framework of this strategy, on March 25 the company presented new subscription services for three different areas: television (Apple TV + and Apple TV Channels), news (News +) and video games (Apple Arcade).
Apple TV +, the most anticipated product of the revealed on that occasion and with which it had been speculating in the industry for years, is a service of original contents of television in “streaming” designed to compete face to face with companies like Netflix , Hulu or Amazon.
During the past six months, Apple investors pocketed 6.66 dollars per share, a figure higher than that recorded in March last year despite the fall in profits, because during 2018 Apple carried out a share buyback program , which also announced that it will maintain in the coming months.
During that same time, the company of the bitten apple managed to reduce its long-term debt to 90,201 million dollars, compared to 93,735 million with which it closed the year 2018.
In the second quarter of the fiscal year, which most analysts paid attention to Wall Street today, the decline in sales of the iPhone increased to 17%, indicating that the downward trend, far from stabilizing, continues to increase .
America (including the US and Canada) continues to be Apple’s large market and almost half of its global revenues come from, while sales have dropped slightly during the last six months in its second largest market, Europe, and very substantially in the third, China.
The CEO of the company, Tim Cook, already warned in early January that clouds were approaching, especially in China: in an unusual move (it was the first time in more than 15 years), he sent a letter to shareholders reviewing downward revenue expectations and warning of the fall in sales of the iPhone.
Despite Apple’s seemingly poor performance, Apple’s stock on Wall Street soared 5.02% to $ 210.75 per share in electronic trading after the close of New York markets.
The reasons for this rise have to be sought not so much in the results themselves, as in the fact that the company has announced the share buy-back operation mentioned above, which will have a value of 75,000 million dollars, and a dividend of 77 cents per title that will be paid next May 16. (EFEUSA).
