Apple's third-quarter 2024 financial results showed 5 percent year-over-year growth. The company set a revenue record of $85.8 billion. This was reported by the Apple press service.
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Despite this, there are several key points that have caused concern among investors – this is the decline in iPhone sales and revenue in China.
Revenue in China fell to $14.7 billion, down 6.3% from a year ago, as Apple faces stiff competition from Huawei and other smartphone companies.
Apple CEO Tim Cook said at a meeting with investors that iPhone models are still the top sellers “in urban China.”
Overall, iPhone sales fell slightly to $39.30 billion this year, from $39.67 billion in the same quarter last year. As a percentage of total sales, iPhone represents the lowest share of the company's other products and services in nearly four years.
How Apple Achieved Revenue Growth
The 5% revenue growth was driven by strong growth in both Services and iPad revenue.
Apple introduced major new iPad updates in Q3 2024, and consumers seemed to respond well, with iPad revenue up nearly 24% to $7.16 billion.
Services revenue, which includes services like Apple TV+ and Apple Music, grew 14%.
Other categories of the Apple company's products, in particular AirPods headphones and Apple Watch, showed a 2% drop to $8.1 billion during the quarter. Meanwhile, Mac sales grew 2% to about $7 billion.
Apple noted that a very large percentage of Apple Watch and iPad buyers this quarter were first-time owners of these device categories, indicating that the market is not yet saturated.
Forecast
The company expects Apple Intelligence (a set of features that use artificial intelligence) to help drive sales of the newest and most expensive iPhones, since the innovations will not work on smartphones before last year's iPhone 15 Pro.
That is, the AI features that will become available with the iOS 18.1 update will be supported on the iPhone 15 Pro, iPhone 15 Pro Max, and future iPhone 16 models.
In general, Apple Intelligence will be available on all major Apple devices, including iPhone, iPad, and Mac.
