Apple Reports Q3 FY 2015 Results: Record Results With Strong iPhone And Mac Sales

Today Apple released their earnings for Q3 of fiscal year 2015, which ended June 27^th. In what seems to be a never-ending sequence of records, once again, Apple posted a record third quarter. Revenue for the quarter came in at $49.6 billion, up 33% from a year ago. Gross margin was $19.7 billion, also up 33% from Q3 2014. Operating income was up almost 37% to $14.1 billion, and net income was $10.7 billion for the quarter, a gain of 37.8% year-over-year. Earnings per share was $1.85, up from $1.28 in Q3 2014.

Apple’s iPhone business has been the primary factor in these record breaking quarters, and the iPhone 6 and 6+ sales continued to be strong. For the quarter, Apple sold 47.5 million iPhones, which is a gain of 35% in units. Even more impressive is that these 35% more units resulted in 59% more revenue, with iPhone sales totalling $31.4 billion for this quarter alone.

Mac sales have also been strong, and while Apple has generally outpaced the PC market in sales growth for a while, Apple saw an additional 5% in Mac unit sales for Q4 compared to Q3, and 9% from a year ago. This is at a time where the rest of the PC market is contracting, so Mac sales were an impressive 4.8 million units, with revenue of just over $6 billion for the quarter. The resurgence of the Mac has been quite the rise, with Mac revenue being eclipsed quite a bit by the iPad not very long ago. Times have changed though and Apple’s PC business is currently the only one that has seen an increase in sales according to the reports floated around in the last couple of weeks.

iPad sales though are not so rosy. The iPad sales were very strong, and while sales are not exactly terrible, the number of units being sold has been dropping for some time. Much debate has been about why this is, but certainly owners of the iPad have not felt the need to refresh their devices anywhere nearly as quickly as phones. For the quarter, there were 10.9 million iPads sold, which resulted in revenue of $4.5 billion. The number of units sold is down 13% from Q2, and down 18% year-over year.

Services, which include iTunes sales, AppleCare, Apple Pay, and will include Apple Music in the future, saw a nice jump as well with just over $5 billion in revenue for the quarter. This is up 1% from last quarter, and up 12% from last year.

“Other Products” which is Apple TV, Apple Watch, Beats, iPods, and accessories had a big quarter, and while individual numbers were not announced, it is likely due to initial sales of the Apple Watch which came out in the quarter. For Q3, this group had sales of $2.6 billion, up 56% from last quarter and up 49% year-over-year. Likely most of the increase can be attributed to the Watch, but without knowing average selling price, it would be pretty difficult to try and extrapolate unit sales without more information.

This pipeline post is quite a bit shorter than the Microsoft earnings, but for all of the right reasons. There is less to say when things are going as well as they are for Apple right now. iPhone sales are still a huge part of their balance sheet, and seem to have no sign of slowing down. People obviously wanted a larger iPhone and sales have skyrocketed since the iPhone 6 and 6+ were launched. But I think we were all expecting this based on past performance. I think what is most interesting is how much of the PC market Apple has managed to chip away with Mac sales, which are up an amazing 9% when the rest of the market contracted.

For Q4, Apple is expecting revenue of $49 to $51 billion, with a gross margin of 38.5 to 39.5%.

Source: Apple Investor Relations

HTC Brings The One M9+ To Europe

Earlier this year, HTC released the One M9+ in the Asia-Pacific region of the world. The One M9+ is visually similar to the normal One M9, but with significant differences to the hardware specifications. It swaps the Qualcomm SoC in the M9 for a MediaTek chip, and moves to a larger and higher resolution display. Today HTC is bringing the One M9+ to various markets in Europe. To see how the One M9+ compares to the standard One M9 you can check out the spec comparison in the chart below.

The One M9+ shares a number of specifications with the normal HTC One M9. However, it resembles the HTC One ME even more closely. The SoC, RAM, storage, connectivity, and battery capacity are all the same as the HTC One ME. It also sports the fingerprint sensor beneath the display. The big difference between the One ME and the One M9+ is that the latter sports an aluminum unibody design instead of plastic, and also brings back HTC’s secondary duo-cam camera. The 20MP camera of the M9+ is still the Toshiba sensor shared with the M9.

While the One M9+ is already available in India, the expansion to Europe means that consumers have more options for smartphones from HTC. It’s also a big win for MediaTek to have a device with their Helio X10 SoC shipping. In Europe, the One M9+ will be released in silver, grey, and gold colors. Pricing is currently unknown but one can make an educated guess based on the pricing in India and China. Availability for specific markets in Europe will be announced as time goes on.

HTC Launches The Desire 520, 526, 626, 626s In The United States

Today HTC announced that they are launching a number of devices in their Desire smartphone line in the United States. In order, the newly available smartphones are the HTC Desire 520, HTC Desire 526, HTC Desire 626, and the HTC Desire 626s. All of these devices expand HTC’s product line in the low-end section of the smartphone market, and you can check out their specifications in the chart below.

As you can see from the chart, all four of these devices are fairly similar as far as specifications go. All use Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 210 SoC, which is the first time to my recollection that we’ve seen this part show up in smartphones. Snapdragon 210 is a quad core Cortex A7 part with a peak frequency of 1.1GHz, which makes it slightly slower than Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 400 parts. On the GPU side, the Adreno 304 GPU is just a variant of Adreno 305 with a max frequency of 400MHz. All of the devices have 8GB of NAND, with the exception of the Desire 626 which has 16GB. On the DRAM side, the Desire 520 and 626s have 1GB of RAM, while the Desire 526 and 626 bump that to 1.5GB. All four phones also have the same 7.6Wh battery capacity, and they all share an 8MP rear camera, with everything except the 5MP Desire 626 also sharing a 2MP front-facing camera.

The major point where these four devices differ is their display size and resolution. The Desire 520 is at the low end of the range with its 4.5″ 854×480 display, followed by the 960×540 Desire 526, and the 5.0″ 1280×720 Desire 626 and 626s. Since the 626 and 626s are larger with the same battery capacity they are thinner than the 520 and 526. Interestingly enough, the Desire 526 is almost 1mm thicker than the 520 despite its larger screen size.

The Desire 626 and 626s will be available in all the colors you see in the cover image above. The Desire 526 comes in black, while the Desire 520 will come in grey. As far as availability goes, HTC says that these devices will be available in a variety of colors from both prepaid and postpaid US carriers. Specifically named operators include AT&T, Boost Mobile, Cricket, MetroPCS, Sprint, T-Mobile, Tracfone, Verizon, and Virgin Mobile USA. T-Mobile is curiously missing from the list. According to HTC, providers will confirm which models and colors they’re carrying beginning this week, and they will be available in the coming months.