What They Say
Apple published its Q4 and full year results and the firm hit a new record of $123.9 billion in Q4, up 11%, with $34.6 billion in profit. In a call, Tim Cook said that Apple now has 1.8 billion active devices, up from 1.65 billion a year ago and 1.5 billion two years ago. iPhone sales were up more than 9% from 2021 to $71.6 billion.
The iPhone, wearables, services and Mac segments all saw record quarters. However, iPads were not as good with sales in Japan down around $1 billion. Mac sales were particularly strong and up 25% on the previous quarter on the back of the success of the M1 chip.
What We Think
With $37 billion in cash on the balance sheet, it must be very liberating for Apple’s management!
It’s good to see the Mac doing well again after several years of static sales. As one of the comments that I saw about the results said “It seems that if you supply better products’ people will buy”. Canalys reported that Apple was 9% up in Q4 in the PC market, against a market that was just 0.8% up. Over the year, Apple was up by 28.3% and went up from 7.6% to 8.5% share.
I have a forty year interrupted history with Apples computers. I must say that looking ahead to my next PC replacement, I might skip having a Windows PC altogether and just go to an iPad Pro on the move with, possibly, a desktop at home. I haven’t thought that for a long time. Part of the reason I wanted the same system at home and away was that I wanted all the same apps and data everywhere. However, with cloud storage and so much of what I do now web-based, I might be able to have separate devices. It’s food for thought and partly enabled by the excellent performance of the iPad Pro I now have.
The key, as always, is software availability. (BR)
