“Apple announced its fiscal Q3 2014 results on July 22, reporting a reasonably strong set of numbers that beat market expectation on earnings, although revenues were slightly lower than anticipated,” Trefis Team writes for Forbes. “The results were driven by the iPhone, which saw demand grow for all three models, and by the Mac, which saw double digits sales growth despite a shrinking personal computer market.”
“The iPhone remains Apple’s most important product by far, accounting for close to half of the company’s value, according to our estimates,” Trefis writes. “For this quarter, Apple shipped about 35 million iPhones, representing a 12.7% jump over the same quarter a year ago, although revenue growth was slightly lower at around 9% possibly due to a greater mix of lower-end handsets.”
“The Mac saw particularly strong sales through the last quarter, with shipments growing by around 18% year-over-year to around 4.4 million units, despite the shrinking PC market. Apple notes that Macs have gained global market share for 32 out of the last 33 quarters. The results were primarily driven by strong sales of the Macbook Air, which recently got a price cut along with a bump in specifications,” Trefis writes. “While sales to the U.S. expanded by double digits, driven by the education buying season, shipments in China were robust, growing by around 39% compared to the broader Chinese PC market which was projected to have shrunk by about 5% during the period. Although the Mac isn’t as big a driver of Apple’s value as its iDevices businesses, it remains an important component of the company’s overall ecosystem.”
Much more in the full article here.