Apple starts a new fiscal year at the end of September every year. Yesterday, Apple released the results for its 2015 fiscal fourth quarter (which ran from June 28, 2015 to September 26, 2015) and held a call with analysts to discuss the results. Apple's largest financial quarter is always the first fiscal quarter (the one that we are in now) because it includes the holiday sales during November and December. But because of a surge in iPhone sales at the very end of the last fiscal quarter — the iPhone 6s and iPhone 6s Plus went on sale on September 25, and the quarter ended the next day — this turned out to be a hugely profitable quarter for Apple. Yesterday, Apple announced quarterly revenue of $51.5 billion and quarterly net profit of $11.1 billion, making it Apple's best ever fiscal fourth quarter. And because it was the end of the fiscal year, Apple also reported revenue for the fiscal year of $234 billion, which is $58 billion (28%) more than 2014. As John Gruber of Daring Fireball remarked: "The most profitable company on the planet today, and revenue and profit are still growing at around 30 percent annually."
If you want to get all of the nitty gritty details, you can download the audio from the announcement conference call from iTunes, or you can read a rough transcript of the call prepared by Seeking Alpha, or you can read a transcript prepared by Serenity Caldwell and Jason Snell over at iMore. Apple's official press release is here. Here are the things said on the call yesterday that I think would be of interest to iPhone and iPad users:
iPhone
- During the past quarter, Apple sold just over 48 million iPhones, the most that Apple has ever sold in a fiscal fourth quarter. A big chunk of those were the new iPhone 6s and iPhone 6s Plus phones sold in the last two days of the quarter; Apple CEO Tim Cook previously announced that Apple sold 13 million new iPhones in the first three days that the new models were on sale, and the first two of those days were in the last fiscal quarter. By comparison, in the 2014 fiscal fourth quarter, Apple sold just over 39 million iPhones, and the end of that quarter included the launch of the iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus.
- 30% of folks who purchased an iPhone in the last quarter to replace a prior smartphone were switching from Android, the highest Android switch rate that Apple has ever seen since it started measuring switchers a few years ago.
- By my count, as of September 26, 2015, Apple had sold over 821 million iPhones since they first went on sale in 2007.
iPad
- Apple sold almost 10 million iPads (9.873 million). That's the fewest iPads that Apple has sold in a fiscal quarter since 2011.
- By my count, as of September 26, 2015, Apple had sold almost 292 million iPads since they first went on sale in 2010.
- Cook referenced that Apple will start to sell the brand new iPad Pro next month. It will be interesting to see what kid of demand there is for the iPad Pro considering that overall iPad sales have been down recently.
- Here is my updated chart showing iPhone and iPad sales to date, by fiscal quarter. Looking at the trend, it seems likely that in the current quarter that includes the 2015 holiday season, Apple will sell over 100 million iOS devices for the first time ever. Indeed, Apple might even sell close to 100 million iPhones alone this quarter.
Etc.
- Cook said that Apple sold more of the Apple Watch in the fiscal fourth quarter than it had in the fiscal third quarter (which was higher than the fiscal second quarter) so Apple Watch sales are on the rise.
- Cook said that there over 13,000 apps on the Watch App Store, 1,300 of which are native apps designed for watchOS 2.0.
- Apple's revenue in China doubled from the previous year. Tim Cook says that, at some point, he believes that China will be Apple's biggest market.
- iOS 9 adoption is very strong, and the updated operating system for the iPhone and iPad was downloaded by more users than any software release in Apple's history. Today, six weeks after it was released on September 16, 61% of active iOS devices are already running iOS 9.
- 6.5 million people are paying for Apple Music. Another 8.5 million people are still in a free 3-month trial of Apple Music.
- Apple Pay will be available to American Express customers in Australia and Canada before the end of 2015, and will expand to Spain, Singapore, and Hong Kong in 2016.