Month: November 2018

Late Thursday, Apple released the results for its 2018 fiscal fourth quarter (which ran from July 1, 2018 to September 29, 2018) and held a call with analysts to discuss the results.  I’ve been reporting on these quarterly calls for 10 years because even though the calls are aimed at financial analysts, the Apple executives would sometimes reveal something interesting about the iPhone and iPad, and also because Apple would reveal how many iPhones and iPads were sold in the last quarter.  However, that is now about to change.  Although Apple revealed iPhone and iPad sales numbers for last quarter, Apple announced that starting with the fiscal 2019 first quarter (which we are in now), Apple will no longer reveal iPhone and iPad unit sales.  I cannot say that I’m surprised; none of Apple’s competitors release similar numbers, and while I am not a securities lawyer, I think that as a public company all that Apple is required to reveal is certain financial information such as profits.  Even so, it has been interesting to look at the data on iPhone and iPads sales over the last decade.

Apple’s fiscal fourth quarter is typically a transitional quarter; it is Apple’s fiscal first quarter which contains all of the holiday sales, so that is by far Apple’s best quarter every year.  Even so, Apple announced that quarterly revenue for the past quarter was $62.9 billion, which is the best fiscal fourth quarter in Apple history.  $10 billion of that was revenue on services, and that is also an all-time high for Apple.  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 transcript of the call prepared by Seeking Alpha, or a transcript prepared by Jason Snell of Six Colors.  Apple’s official press release is here.  Here are the items that stood out to me.

iPhone

• During the past quarter, Apple sold 46.9 million iPhones, just slightly more than the 46.7 million iPhones sold in Apple 2017 fiscal fourth quarter. The all-time record for iPhone sales in a fiscal Q3 was in 2015, when Apple sold 48 million iPhones.
• While the increase in the number of iPhones sold versus 2017 Q3 was modest, the increase in revenue from iPhone sales was more impressive thanks to sales of the iPhone X and the first few weeks of sales of the iPhone XS and iPhone XS Max.  iPhone revenue was $28.8 billion in 2017 Q4, and it rose to $37.2 billion in 2018 Q4, a 29% increase.  Considering that unit sales did not go up very much, that demonstrates that people are now buying more expensive iPhones.
• By my count, Apple has sold 1.468 billion iPhones since they first went on sale in 2007.  And because Apple will no longer report these numbers every quarter, this is the last time I’ll be able to report a precise number of all-time iPhone sales.

 

iPad

• Apple sold 9.7 million iPads in the fiscal third quarter.  That’s not as impressive as many other recent quarters, but the introduction of the new iPad Pro last week may start to change that.
• By my count, Apple has sold almost 425 million iPads since they first went on sale in 2010.
• If you add all of the iPhone and iPad sales over time, it comes to about 1.892 billion devices sold.  If you add in all of the sales of the iPod touch over time, another device that runs iOS, Tim Cook announced last week that Apple has sold over 2 billion devices that run iOS.

Other

• Tim Cook announced that Apple Pay use has tripled since this time last year.
• Cook also noted that Consumer Reports named Apple Pay Cash the highest-rates mobile peer-to-peer service, based on exceptional payment authentication and data privacy.
• Cook said that it was a record quarter for revenue from wearable products, including the Apple Watch, AirPods and Beats headphones.
• Apple now has about 500 Apple Stores, and almost half of those are outside of the United States.
• Cook noted that healthcare is an area in which Apple has a lot of interest.  “You can see from our past several years that we have intense interest in the space and are adding products and services — not monetized services, so far — to that, and I don’t want to talk about the future, it’s because I don’t want to give away what we’re doing. But this is an area of major interest to us.”

When I was younger, taking a photograph meant using film in a camera.  You only had so many pictures on a roll, and you had to pay to develop every picture (even the bad ones), so you were more circumspect about pressing that shutter button.  Nowadays, you can take virtually unlimited pictures for free with your iPhone.  That’s great, but it also means that you end up with tons of pictures, only some of which are worth keeping.  This week, California attorney David Sparks of MacSparky reviews BestPhotos, an iPhone app that helps you to pick out the photos on your iPhone that are worth keeping.  The app even gives you options to quickly delete obvious errors.  For example, the app can quickly find all of the videos on your iPhone that last about one second because those are videos that you likely took by accident when you intended to take a photo but instead you were in video mode.  Just tap the mistakes and then tap one button to delete them all.  You can also quickly add missing location information to a bunch of photos at one time, view photos side-by-side to quickly select the one worth keeping, view all of the metadata associated with a picture, and much more.  I was thrilled to learn about the BestPhotos app (developer website) from David Sparks and I quickly paid the $3 to unlock all of the features.  And now, the news of note from the past week:

• Illinois attorney John Voorhees of MacStories writes about some of the interesting details of Apple’s October 30th announcements that you may have missed.
• California attorney Jeffrey Allen recommends iPhone apps for road warriors in an article for the ABA GPSolo Magazine.
• I’ve written before (1, 2) about how border patrol agents will sometimes demand the right to search your iPhone as you come into the United States, and if you decline to unlock your iPhone and let them do so, they may seize the device.  Two months ago this happened to an American Muslim woman, and she retained an attorney with the Council on American-Islamic Relations to represent her in a lawsuit against the government.  Cyrus Farivar of Ars Technica reported this week that the case settled and that the government returned her iPhone.
• It sounds like a scene from a techno horror movie — a bunch of Apple Watches in a hospital shut down, and then a bunch of iPhones shut down, but other cellphones and electronic devices continue to work just fine.  What in the world could cause that?  Kyle Wiens of iFixIt reports that it turns out that there was a helium leak from an MRI machine which impacted the clocks on Apple devices, and when the clock stops working, the rest of the device cannot work so it shuts down.  It’s an interesting story.
• If you use the Microsoft Outlook app on your iPhone, Michael Potuck of 9to5Mac reports that a new update provides better support for the larger screens on an iPhone XS Max and and iPhone XR.
• Jeremy Burge of Emojipedia shows off all of the new emoji and emoji changes introduced in iOS 12.1, which came out earlier this week.  He counts 158 new emojis.
• In January of 2017, Apple introduced a new power management feature for the iPhone 7 and earlier models to help to prevent a device from unexpectedly shutting down when the battery in the device gets old.  Joe Rossignol of MacRumors reports that iOS 12.1 adds this feature to the iPhone 8 and iPhone X.
• Rossignol also reports that initial tests show that the new iPad Pro is as fast as a new MacBook Pro.  Wow.
• Charlie Sorrel of Cult of Mac discusses the USB-C port on the new iPad Pro.
• M.G. Siegler reviews the Apple Watch Series 4 in a post on Medium.  He believes that this is the first truly great Apple Watch, and I agree.
• Brent Dirks of AppAdvice reviews Name Skillz, a $5 app which helps you to remember peoples’ names.
• And finally, Apple released two videos this week which show off the new features in the iPad Pro.  A one minute video called Change focuses on what is different, like the larger screen.  The more informative one is a three-minute introduction video, and that is the one I have embedded below: