Apple today reported earnings for the first quarter of 2023. It was his one of the company’s worst-performing quarters in recent years. This was his biggest drop since 2016 and his first drop since 2019. Overall revenue fell more than 5% year-over-year as the company failed to match sales in the same quarter last year in most hardware categories.
iPhone sales for the quarter were $65.78 billion, down 8.17% year-over-year. Similarly, ‘Other Products’, which includes Watches, AirPods, and other outliers, fell 8.3% year-over-year to $13.48 billion. The real underperformer was Mac, down about 30% to $7.74 billion.
Two parts of the grown business are services (Apple Music and TV+, iCloud, AppleCare, etc.) and iPad. Services increased 6.4% to $20.77 billion and iPad increased 29.66% to $9.4 billion.
Chief Executive Tim Cook said on the company’s earnings call that Apple was facing a “challenging macroeconomic environment.” In addition, he cited two other main factors behind the quarter’s dip. That is China’s production and supply problems and a strong US dollar. Apple has struggled to meet consumer demand for many of its products, sometimes delaying shipments by weeks. Cook said Apple might have met analyst expectations if supply issues weren’t a factor, but it’s impossible to know for sure.
On the bright side, Apple says it has resolved many of these supply issues for now, with 2 billion active Apple devices now in the hands of users worldwide. And clearly, his $117.15 billion earnings for the quarter are still huge, even if they didn’t meet or match last year’s expectations.
Apple declined to provide guidance on its expectations for the next quarter. It hasn’t done so in any quarter since the pandemic began in 2020.
