Apple starts a new fiscal year at the end of September every year. Yesterday, Apple released the results for its 2016 fiscal fourth quarter (which ran from June 26, 2016 to September 24, 2016) and held a call with analysts to discuss the results. Note that 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. As for the last fiscal quarter, the new iPhone 7 went on sale on September 16, so there was about a week of sales of the new iPhones included in the fiscal fourth quarter. Yesterday, Apple announced quarterly revenue of $46.9 billion and quarterly net profit of $9 billion. 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. iMore also prepared a transcript. Apple's official press release is here.
As always, I'm not particularly interested in the financial aspects of this call. But I'm always interested in the statements of Apple executives that pertain to the use of the iPhone and iPad. Here are the items that stood out to me:
iPhone
- Apple sold just over 45.5 million iPhones in the last fiscal quarter. By my count, that means that Apple has sold about 1,033,476,000 as of September 24, 2016. Sorry, it's not very often that I get to write a number that is over a billion, so it was fun to write that one out in full. Thanks for indulging me.
- Worldwide demand for the iPhone 7, and especially the iPhone 7 Plus, significantly outpaces supply. By the end of the current quarter, Cook believes that Apple will be able to catch up with demand for the iPhone 7, but may not be able to catch up with iPhone 7 Plus demand Nevertheless, Apple says that it is working hard to catch up to demand, so if you are still waiting for your new iPhone, hopefully you will have it soon.
- Apple sells iPhones to three groups of customers: new smartphone users, users switching from another brand (typically Android), and users upgrading from an older iPhone. Apple CEO Tim Cook announced yesterday that, looking at fiscal 2016 as a whole, Apple saw more switchers from Android in 2016 than ever before.
iPad
- Apple sold almost 9.3 million iPads in the last fiscal quarter. By my count, that means that Apple has sold over 337 million iPads as of September 24, 2016.
- Apple said that, according to the independent company NPD, 82% of tablets sold in the U.S. in the last quarter above $200 are iPads.
Etc.
- Cook noted that Apple Pay continues to expand around the world. The service launched in Russia and New Zealand this month, and is coming to Spain in the next few months. There were more Apple Pay transactions in the month of September 2016 than all of fiscal 2015.
- Cook said that Siri gets two billion requests every week, which means that Apple has shipped more assistant-enabled devices than any other company.
- Apple expects that there will be over 100 HomeKit-compatible products on the market by the end of this year.
- Cook was asked about what Apple is doing in the automobile space. I expected Cook to simply decline to discuss theoretical unannounced products, but Cook said a little more than that: "I can't speak about rumors, but as you know, we look for ways that we can improve the experience and the customers' experience on different sets of products, and we are always looking at new things. And the car space in general is an area that it's clear that there is a lot of technologies that will either become available or will be able to revolutionize the car experience. And so it's interesting from that point of view, but nothing to, certainly nothing to announce today."
- Cook was also asked about Apple's plans for television. Cook said: "I would confirm that television has intense interest with me and many other people here. In terms of owning content and creating content, we have started with focusing on some original content, as you point out. We've got a few things going there that we've talked about. And I think it's a great opportunity for us, both from a creation point of view and an ownership point of view. And so it's is an area that we're focused on."
