Chinese market takes bite out of Apple sales

Global tech giant Apple Inc. experienced a decrease of 12 per cent in its Chinese sales revenues, including from Macau, Hong Kong and Taiwan, for the first quarter of its 2017 fiscal year that ended December 31, 2016.
The sales performance of Mainland China, according to the company’s latest filing, is the only region to experience a yearly decline in revenue.
The tech giant recorded US$16.2 billion (MOP129.7 billion) income from China compared to US$18.4 billion recorded in the same period of the year in 2016.
The company’s filing shows that Japan has the highest growth in its first quarter sales, up 20 per cent year-on-year to US$5.8 billion.
Other regions – including the Americas (9 per cent), Europe (3 per cent) and the rest of Asia Pacific (8 per cent) – all enjoy increasing sales performance in this year’s first quarter when compared to the same period last year.
Regarding overall performance, the company posted US$78.4 billion revenue in the first quarter of its 2017 fiscal year, up 3 per cent year-on-year compared to the first quarter in 2016.
In terms of sales of Apple products, revenue in the first quarter this year generated by iPad has dampened 22 per cent year-on-year, amounting to US$5.5 billion compared to US$7.1 billion produced in the same period of 2016.
A total of 13.1 million iPads were sold vis-à-vis 16.1 million registered in 2016, according to the filing.
Revenue generated by other products such as Apple TV, Apple Watch, Beats products, iPod and Apple-branded and third-party accessories decreased by 8 per cent year-on-year. Meanwhile, the revenue of iPhones and units sold both experienced 5 per cent increase, with sales amounting to US$54.4 billion and 78.3 million iPhones being sold in the first quarter of 2017.
There is currently one official Apple Store in the MSAR territory – opened last year in June in Phase II of Galaxy Macau.
“We’re thrilled to report that our holiday quarter results generated Apple’s highest quarterly revenue ever, and broke multiple records along the way. We sold more iPhones than ever before and set all-time revenue records for iPhone, Services, Mac and Apple Watch,” said Tim Cook, the CEO of Apple, as cited by the company’s press release.