Apple has announced record numbers for the first quarter of 2022. Despite hardware shortages in the global market, the company grew by 11% year-on-year. In direct contrast, Huawei announced two new smartphones this week, ultimately reflecting the manufacturer’s desperation to remain relevant in the market.
Before we dive into the winners and losers of the last seven days, let’s take a look at NextPit’s top headlines over the past week:
Winner of the week: Apple continues to conquer the market
Anyone who has decided to buy Apple shares in recent years can be happy. The company just announced its financial results for the first quarter of fiscal 2022, ended December 25, 2021, and reported an 11% increase over the same quarter last year. That means the company posted record revenue of $123.95 billion in the fourth quarter of last year. According to Apple, net income was $34.6 billion and earnings per share were $2.10.
While we don’t have information on the volume of products Apple sells, a revenue breakdown by product category shows that iPhone sales alone are up 9% compared to the same period last year. What really catches the eye, however, are the 25% gains in Mac sales ($10.85 billion) and 24% in services ($19.5 billion).
Apple’s Q4 2021 services revenue was $19.5 billion / © Apple
Another surprising number is the number of active Apple devices worldwide: it’s already 1.8 billion. According to analysts, this number will increase to 2 billion active devices by 2022. Last year, the installed base at this point was 1.65 billion devices. In other words, the company sold 150 million new devices during this period.
In December, news of a secret 2016 agreement between Apple and the Chinese government made headlines in many news outlets. Coincidentally or not, in recent years – especially 2021 – Apple has consolidated itself in the Chinese market. According to Counterpoint Research In January 2022, Apple sold its highest number of iPhones in a single year since its inception, and one of the main reasons for that was Apple’s biggest growth in China since October 2021.
In other words: Apple is about to conquer the market! And if Apple is gaining ground in the world market, it’s because another company is losing. And this company is called Huawei.
Loser of the week: Huawei clearly lags behind
Huawei announced two new smartphones this week, the Huawei P50 Pro and the P50 Pocket. The models have at least two “features” in common: they lack support for the 5G network and Google Services. There were a few words of praise for the Flip model in our team, but in general the NextPit editorial team suggested that it would be very difficult for Huawei to remain globally relevant.
Huawei P50 Pocket looks interesting but may not have a place in the Chinese market in 2022 / © Huawei
The P50 Pocket presents itself as an ambitious competitor for the Samsung Galaxy Z Flip 3 and has a triple camera module. This immediately makes a better impression than the main camera of the Samsung Flip. However, it lacks 5G, support for Google services and will be mainly marketed in China, one of the top-selling countries of the Galaxy Z Flip 3 in the last year. In other words, Huawei is unlikely to break the mold in the foldable category again.
For me as Tech fanatics are saddened to see a company that has innovated so much in recent years losing ground like Huawei.
In any case, my colleague Antoine Engels is currently testing the Huawei P50 Pro, you can look forward to the test report in the next few days. We also asked you about your opinion on the future of the manufacturer in our poll of the week on Friday. I am very curious to see what you think of Huawei at the moment.
And with this thought I will end my column for this week! But before I say goodbye, I’d like to know what you think of this week’s selection? Let us know what you think in the comments on this article.