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source from：WSJ
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Apple Reports First Quarterly Sales Drop Since 2003
iPhone sales post first year-over-year decline
By DAISUKE WAKABAYASHI
Updated April 26, 2016 6:42 p.m. ET
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Apple Inc.’s quarterly profit fell 22.5% as revenue declined for the first time since 2003 and iPhone sales declined for the first time ever.
Revenue and profit for the period ended March 26 both fell short of analysts’ expectations, as Apple struggles to maintain the sales surge that followed the introduction of its larger-screen smartphones in late 2014. The 2015 successors to those initial big-display models haven’t garnered as much enthusiasm from consumers, and Apple projected that revenue in the current quarter would fall far short of expectations.
In an interview with The Wall Street Journal, Apple Chief Executive Tim Cook said it was “a challenging quarter” for the company. It struggled with tough comparisons on iPhone sales compared with a year earlier when demand for the iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus was booming. What’s more, demand for those models prompted some consumers to upgrade sooner than usual, and sapped interest in the latest phones, he said.
“It’s a tough bar to hurdle, but it doesn’t change the future. The future is very bright,” Mr. Cook said.
Shares of Apple, down 20% over the past year, fell 7.6% to 96.41 dollars in after-hours trading.
Analysts polled by Thomson Reuters estimated that Apple would post earnings of 2 dollars a share on revenue of 51.97 billion dollars.
Apple said it was still feeling the impact of the strong dollar in its global sales, noting that the revenue decline would have narrowed by 4 percentage points without the currency’s impact. In addition, the price increases that the company implemented to deal with the dollar’s appreciation hurt demand for its products.
After an unbroken eight-year run of growing iPhone sales since the product’s introduction in 2007, Apple said it sold 51.19 million iPhones, down 16.3% from the 61.17 million units it sold a year earlier.
Mr. Cook said that while the rate of existing iPhone users upgrading to its latest models were hurt by the surge in sales last year for the iPhone 6, Apple continues to do well with new smartphone buyers as well as customers switching over from phones running Alphabet Inc.’s Android operating system.
Apple said it had the highest-ever number of switchers from other smartphones in the first six months of its fiscal year started in October.
For the current quarter, Apple sees revenue coming in between 41 billion dollars and 43 billion dollars. Analysts had been projecting revenue of 47.3 billion dollars. It also projected gross margin, a closely watched measure of profitability reflecting the percentage of revenue that remains after manufacturing costs, of 37.5% to 38%, shy of analysts’ projections of 39.3%.
Mr. Cook explained the lower-than-expected revenue forecast for the current quarter as a reflection of Apple’s plan to take 2 billion dollars of inventory out of its sales channel because of the difficult economy, the lower average selling price of the iPhone SE and analysts being too optimistic about a sales surge for Mac computers during the back-to-school shopping season.
Mr. Cook said the Chinese economy has stabilized even though it may not be growing at the white-hot rates of the recent past. “It’s not the strong wind at your back of a year ago or even 18 months ago, but it’s still a really good economy,” he said.
Sales to Greater China, which includes Hong Kong and Taiwan, fell 26% to 12.49 billion dollars. In the same quarter a year earlier, Apple’s Greater China sales rose 71%.
It has been 13 years since Apple last reported a decline in quarterly revenue. During that time, Apple popularized the iPod and introduced the iPhone and iPad. The unparalleled run of financial success and technological influence drove the company’s market value from 5 billion dollars to 579 billion dollars, the world’s largest, as of Tuesday’s close.
Even as the company’s lineup of products has grown—most recently with the Apple Watch in 2015—the iPhone has become a larger portion of Apple’s sales, particularly in the past fiscal year on the back of demand for larger-display phones. As a result, Apple is now the iPhone company, and its fortunes rise and fall with sales of its flagship smartphone.
The iPhone accounted for 65% of Apple’s total revenue in the March quarter.
Apple’s iPhone sales came in above analysts’ estimates of 50.4 million iPhones during the March quarter, according to 30 analysts polled by FactSet. But the average selling price fell to 641 dollars, below analysts’ projections of 658 dollars.
These figures didn’t include sales from Apple’s latest iPhone SE, a handset with a smaller 4-inch display to replace the iPhone 5S. It began shipping on March 31. Starting at 400 dollars, it is the least expensive new iPhone that Apple has ever introduced.
As iPhone revenue slows, sales of Apple’s other products haven't compensated for the shortfall. Apple said iPad sales fell for a ninth-straight quarter. Apple said it sold 10.25 million iPads during the quarter, down 19%.
Apple also said it is expanding its capital-return program, which includes dividends and share repurchases. The company said it is now planning to return 250 billion dollars in cash to shareholders by the end of March 2018, up from its prior plan to return 200 billion dollars by March 2017.
Specifically, Apple is raising its quarterly dividend by 10% to 57 cents and increasing its stock-buyback plan to 175 billion dollars from the 140 billion dollars announced last year.
Since it started returning cash to shareholders in 2012, Apple has paid out 163 billion dollars through March
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