UPDATED 22:51 EDT / JANUARY 26 2016

NEWS

Apple delivers another quarterly financial record but predicts iPhone sales will start to decline

Apple broke its own quarterly records once again in the last quarter of 2015, but this may be the last record quarter for the technology giant as iPhone sales begin to slow.

For the quarter ending December 26, 2015, Apple made a record $75.9 billion in revenue on income of $18.4 billion, or $3.28 per share, compared to revenue of $74.6 billion and income of $18 billion or $3.06 per share for the same quarter of 2014.

Gross margin was booked at 40.1 percent compared to 39.9 percent in the year-ago quarter, and international sales accounted for 66 percent of revenue for the quarter.

Sales of the iPhone continue to dominate Apple’s financials, with the company shipping 74.8 million units in the quarter, below market predictions of 75.4-77 million, accounting for revenue of $51.6 billion.

iPad sales remained flat despite the launch of the iPad Pro, with the company making $7.1 billion in revenue off sales of 16.1 million units.

Apple’s Mac line saw the sale of 5.3 million units sold, down significantly from the previous quarter’s figure of 6.8 billion, but still with a solid revenue number of $6.7 billion.

Services, which includes Apple Pay and Apple Care brought in $6 billion in revenue, while Apple’s “other” category which includes the Apple Watch, iPod, Beats headphones, Apple TV, AirPort routers, and other accessories saw $4.3 billion in revenue, up from $3.05 billion in the previous quarter, and possibly reflecting growing sales for both the Apple TV and Apple Watch.

“Our team delivered Apple’s biggest quarter ever, thanks to the world’s most innovative products and all-time record sales of iPhone, Apple Watch and Apple TV,” Apple Chief Executive Officer Tim Cook said in a statement. “The growth of our Services business accelerated during the quarter to produce record results, and our installed base recently crossed a major milestone of one billion active devices.”

Worrying projections

While the headline numbers of the quarter were again great for Apple, the end of eternal growth appears to be nigh with the company predicting slowing growth in the quarter ahead.

Apple said it expected revenue for its second quarter of its 2015-2016 financial year to be between $50 billion and $53 billion, below the average estimate of $55.7 billion from analysts.

Added to those numbers is another first: Tim Cook said that the company expects iPhone sales to decline in the March quarter compared to the same quarter last year, the first time Apple would have seen a quarterly decline in iPhone sales since Steve Jobs launched the device in February 2007.

Cook also blamed slowing growth on global financial markets, in particular the “overall malaise in virtually every country in the world” as having an impact on the quarter ahead.

While the numbers are still large for Apple, it’s always a worry when a company Chief Executive Officer starts blaming currency fluctuations for its problems, either currently or in the future, particularly given it wouldn’t have taken a rocket science to predict the increasing value of the U.S. dollar as the Federal Reserve started to slow down its quantitative easing program complete with the record low interest rates that drove the value of the dollar so far down versus global currencies to begin with.

The market wasn’t impressed with the forward projections, with stock in APPL dropping 2.57 percent in after-hours trading to $97.42, continuing a longer downward trend from the stock after it peaked at $134.54 in 2015.

Image credit: iphonedigital/Flickr/CC by 2.0

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