On November 1st Beijing time, Apple's latest financial report for the fourth quarter of fiscal year 2024 (the third quarter of 2024) was released.
According to the financial report, in the third quarter of 2024, Apple achieved a total revenue of $94.93 billion, a year-on-year increase of 6.07%, and a net profit of $14.736 billion, a year-on-year decrease of 35.81%.
It is understood that the reason why Apple's net profit declined in this quarter is due to the inclusion of a one-time income tax expense of $10.2 billion, which is related to Apple's requirement by the European Union to pay 13 billion euros in taxes to Ireland. On September 10th this year, the European Court of Justice confirmed the European Commission's ruling in 2016, requiring Apple to pay back taxes.
In that quarter, Apple released its annual flagship product, the core product iPhone 16 series, as well as new products such as the Apple Watch Series 10 and AirPods 4. At the same time, after the release of iPhone 16, Apple conducted price promotions for iPhone 15 in China, India, and other places.
According to the financial report, the net sales of the iPhone business for the quarter were $46.222 billion, an increase of 5.52% from $43.805 billion in the same period last year.
This quarter, Apple's Mac business had a net sales revenue of $7.744 billion, an increase of 2% from $7.614 billion in the same period last year; The net sales of iPad business reached 6.95 billion US dollars, an increase of 8% compared to 6.443 billion US dollars in the same period last year; The net sales of wearable, home, and accessory businesses were 9.042 billion US dollars, a decrease of 3% from the same period last year's 9.322 billion US dollars; The net sales revenue of the service business was 24.972 billion US dollars, an increase of 12% compared to the same period last year's 22.314 billion US dollars.
However, looking at different regions, Apple's performance in Greater China is under pressure, achieving revenue of $15.033 billion in the quarter, a decrease of 0.3% from the same period last year's $15.084 billion. Nevertheless, Apple's sales in the Americas, Europe, Japan, and other regions of the Asia Pacific all saw year-on-year growth in the quarter.
It is worth mentioning that this week, on October 28th local time, Apple announced the release of the first batch of Apple Smart features for iPhone, iPad, and Mac users in the form of a free software update, along with iOS 18.1, iPadOS 18.1, and macOS Sequoia 15.1. This personal intelligent system can use Apple chips to understand and create language and images, perform cross app operations, and simplify and accelerate daily tasks according to personal situations.
It is understood that Apple's intelligent support for some countries and regions around the world requires both the device language and Siri language to be set to US English; It is expected to support more languages such as Chinese, French, German, Japanese, etc. next year.
According to market research firm Canalys, Apple's iPhone 16 series performed strongly in emerging markets in the third quarter, with a record shipment volume of 54.5 million units, ranking second in the world. Since the release of Apple Intelligence, consumers have actively upgraded from old iPhone 12 and iPhone 13 models to new models to experience this new technology.
According to IDC data, in the third quarter, the shipment volume of China's smartphone market was about 68.78 million units, a year-on-year increase of 3.2%. Among them, Apple's market share was 15.6%, ranking second; However, the shipment of iPhones in this quarter was 10.73 million units, a year-on-year decrease of 0.3%.
After the financial report was released, Apple CEO Cook held a conference call and stated that the sales of the iPhone 16 series in September 2024 were stronger than those of the iPhone 15 series in September 2023. Thanks to the launch of Apple Intelligence, starting from this Monday, the user update rate for iOS 18.1 is twice that of iOS 17.1 in the same period last year.
On October 31st local time, Apple's after hours stock price expanded its decline to 2.5% after the start of the earnings conference call, and closed down 1.82%. Apple expects that the year-on-year revenue growth rate in the first fiscal quarter (fourth quarter of 2024) will slow down to the middle of the 0-10% range.