On August 2, 2018, two days after Apple released its fiscal third quarter (Q3) financial report for fiscal year 2018, Apple's stock price exceeded $207.05 in a sustained rise, ultimately pushing Apple's market value to finally exceed $1 trillion. For the next three months, Apple's market value has remained above trillion dollars, becoming a veritable trillion dollar company.
However, affected by the Q4 financial report released on November 1, Apple's market value once fell below trillions of dollars.
A still healthy financial report
According to Apple's financial data for the 2018 fiscal year ended September 29, Apple's revenue in Q4 was US$62.9 billion, a 20% increase from US$52.579 billion in the same period last year; net profit was US$14.125 billion, a 32% increase from US$10.714 billion in the same period last year.
Judging from the overall revenue figure, Apple's performance in Q4 is quite healthy.
Specifically for different revenue sectors, iPhone 6's Q4 revenue was US$37.185 billion, accounting for 59.12%, while the same period last year was 54.86%; it can be seen that iPhone is still the big source of revenue, and compared with last year, Apple's revenue is more dependent on iPhone.
In terms of sales, Apple sold 46.889 million iPhones in Q4, an increase of 212,000 from 46.677 million units in the same period last year, which is almost negligible; despite this, revenue from iPhones increased by 29% compared with the same period last year, which is obviously the result of a significant increase in the average price of iPhones, with an average price (ASP) of US$793.94, and an average price of US$617.99 in the same period last year, while the former increased by 28.74% compared with the latter.
Apple CFO Luca Maestri said that the increase in average prices is due to the iPhone X, iPhone 8 and iPhone 8 Plus, and it is also thanks to the release of iPhone XS and XS Plus - of course, in terms of time, the former has a greater impact.
revenue from iPad was US$4.089 billion, a 15% decrease from US$4.831 billion in the same period last year; iPad sales were 9.699 million units, a 6% decrease from 10.326 million units in the same period last year. Revenue from Mac was US$7.111 billion, up 3% from US$7.17 billion in the same period last year; Mac sales were 5.299 million units, down 2% from 5.386 million in the same period last year. Apple said the result is related to Apple's new MacBook Pro model released in July.
This shows that iPad and Mac did not perform well in financial reports, especially in sales.
, in addition to the three major categories of iPhone, iPad and Mac, revenue from services was US$9.981 billion, an increase of 17% from US$8.501 billion in the same period last year (excluding the one-time adjustment of US$640 million a year ago, which is a growth rate of 27%); revenue from other products (including AirPods, Apple TV, Apple Watch, Beats devices, HomePod, iPod touch and Apple's own or third-party accessories) was US$4.234 billion, an increase of 31% from US$3.231 billion in the same period last year.
Obviously, these two parts contributed a lot of profits to Apple's financial report. Especially in Apple's financial report, the growth rate of service revenue has become a highlight and has been emphasized by Apple. According to Leifeng.com's calculations, service revenue has accounted for 15.87% of Apple. Among other products, Tim Cook specifically stated in the earnings call that the growth rate of wearable devices (including Apple Watch, AirPods and Beats products) exceeded 50%.
Apple CEO Tim Cook said that in 2018, Apple shipped 20 billion iOS devices and celebrated the tenth anniversary of the App Store; not only that, it also won the best revenue Apple has ever produced.
Apple's financial report will no longer be released. iPhone, iPad, and Mac sales
In the conference call after the financial report was released, Apple CFO Luca Maestri said that starting from the first quarter financial report of fiscal year 2019, Apple's financial report data will undergo four major changes.
specifically as follows:
Based on the increasing importance of revenue from Apple's service, Apple's financial report will report total revenue and sales costs in the product and service sectors in the future.
Revenue from Maps, Siri, iCloud, etc. was previously included in product revenue, and this part of the revenue will be included in service revenue in the future. This change will not affect Apple's total revenue, but will have an impact on Apple's revenue structure in different sectors.
Starting from Q1 of fiscal year 2019, Apple will no longer publish sales data for iPhone, iPad and Mac in its financial report revenue. The reason is that Apple says its goal is to create great products and services to enrich people's lives and provide a unique user experience, and the 90-day sales receipt does not reflect Apple's business growth.
Starting from Q1 of fiscal year 2019, Apple will rename the "Other Products" sector to the "Wearable, Home and Accessories" sector, with the aim of describing this sector more accurately. These financial report data released by
Luca Maestri, especially the third article, about not releasing the specific sales of iPhone, iPad and Mac, has caused changes in the stock market; Apple's stock price fell by 7% after the news was released, and Apple's market value also fell by less than US$1 trillion.
Fortunately, Apple's stock price fell sharply and rebounded rapidly, eventually bringing Apple back above the level of one trillion market value.
However, there is a question worth thinking about. In addition to the reasons given by the official, why did Apple choose to stop publishing sales of iPhone, Mac and iPad at this point in time?
For this reason, Leifeng.com checked Apple's previous financial reports and found that in the past four quarters, the year-on-year growth rate of iPhone, iPad and Mac sales was all lower than 3%, and iPhone, iPad and Mac all experienced year-on-year declines in sales; among them, Mac sales have declined for four consecutive quarters, with the highest decline in services reaching 13%.
If we look at the sales changes of the most important iPhone separately, the year-on-year growth rate of iPhone in the past ten quarters was the highest 5% (2017Q1), while in the past seven quarters, the up and down swing rate of iPhone sales growth rate did not exceed 3%, which was almost 0 this quarter.
From this, Leifeng.com can conclude that although the revenue brought by iPhone is still increasing, this is almost entirely the result of the growth of the average selling price of iPhone; and at the sales level, iPhone has achieved initial coverage of many target user groups around the world, and is almost unable to achieve continuous large-scale service growth in sales.
Of course, Apple is also actively developing other key emerging markets, such as India, Brazil, Turkey, and Russia; but according to Apple CEO Tim Cook, Apple's sales in the Indian market have not changed, but in the Brazil market, there has been a reverse result he had never expected - a decline.
In addition, the global sales data just released by IDC also shows that Apple's shipments grew by only 0.5% year-on-year, and Huawei has surpassed Apple and has become the second place in global sales for two consecutive quarters.
Therefore, the next focus of Apple's business is no longer to continue to increase the user coverage of iPhone, but to strive to explore the value of users based on the existing user coverage, including increasing the price of hardware through investment in technological innovation and increasing revenue at the Internet and service levels - only in this way can Apple maintain its value motivation in future business revenue.
From this perspective, Apple announced the above changes at the time of release of this quarter's financial report, which is completely in line with its future development direction.
Of course, Leifeng.com believes that with Apple's product and service capabilities and changes in the way of financial report data disclosure may increase the opacity of Apple's financial report, but it will essentially not affect Apple's future business development. As for the next quarter, in fact, in the two press conferences in September and October, Apple has made major updates to the four product lines of iPhone, iPad, Mac and Apple Watch. It can be seen that the positive impact of these new products on Apple's business development will be largely reflected in Apple's next quarter's financial report (Q1 2019).
Let's wait and see.
