Even in times of Corona, the cash registers at Apple are ringing. The US company brings more iPhones to customers than expected. The pandemic has a negative impact on the production of new devices.
Apple's business is immune to the corona crisis. The iPhone Group's sales rose eleven percent to $ 59.7 billion in the past quarter – a record for the second quarter. All product areas grew. Profits increased twelve percent to $ 11.25 billion. The numbers exceeded analysts' expectations.
The stock gained around five percent in after-hours trading on Thursday, trading above the $ 400 mark for the first time. Apple also announced a 4-to-1 stock split to make the paper more affordable. That means: Apple increases the number of shares – a shareholder who previously owned one share would then have four shares in the future.
Among other things, the iPhone business performed significantly better than many market observers expected. Apple increased sales of its key product by almost 1.7 percent to $ 26.4 billion. Analysts had expected iPhone sales to be as low as $ 21 billion. Mac computers' sales jumped by around 22 percent to a record $ 7 billion.
The pandemic is now noticeable in production: The new iPhone models will not go on sale this September as usual. Apple expects the devices to be available "a few weeks later," said CFO Luca Maestri. In view of the stoppages in the Chinese manufacturing industry due to the corona crisis, speculation had already started in spring. Apple is again expecting several iPhone models with different screen sizes this year. According to media reports, they will support 5G data radio for the first time.
iPhone SE attracts new customers
Apple has been launching new iPhones for years in September. There was an exception in 2017 – at that time the top model iPhone X only came onto the market in November. With the announcement, the group prepared investors for the fact that the usual increase in sales due to the new models should not occur in the current quarter.
The new edition of the cheaper iPhone SE seems to have played an important role in the excellent figures that have now been announced. According to calculations by the market research company IDC, Apple increased iPhone sales in the past quarter by a good eleven percent to 37.6 million devices. The difference between the growth in unit numbers and sales indicates that more affordable devices were sold than a year earlier. In any case, the significant increase in sales is remarkable in a market that, according to IDC figures, shrank by 16 percent overall. It was the biggest drop in the long booming business so far.
The group itself no longer reports sales figures. CEO Tim Cook only said: "The iPhone SE definitely helped our results." Among other things, many previous users of Android smartphones had bought it. Analysts already anticipated that consumers in the crisis will increasingly use cheaper smartphone models in the face of economic uncertainty and loss of income. According to calculations by the market research company Kantar, Apple's market share in the German smartphone business rose to 26 percent – from around 20 percent a year ago.
Mac computers' sales jumped by around 22 percent to a record $ 7 billion. The service business with subscriptions for music or storage space as well as Apple's revenue from the App Store once again proved to be an important source of money with an increase in sales of around 15 percent to just under $ 13.2 billion. Apple now has a total of 550 million subscription customers in its various services.
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