14 DAY TRIAL // During the financial results Conference call Q4 2015, available for replay on the Apple Events website for approximately two weeks from now, Apple reported record revenue and net profit for the last fiscal quarter of 2015, as well as record growth for the past year, with revenue of $234 billion and an increase of 28% (translated in $51 billion) over 2014.
To put things into perspective, Tim Cook said that Apple's "growth in one year was greater than the full year revenue of almost 90% of the companies in the Fortune 500."
Moreover, "Fiscal 2015 was Apple’s most successful year ever," said Cook, and “we are heading into the holidays with our strongest product lineup yet, including iPhone 6s and iPhone 6s Plus, Apple Watch with an expanded lineup of cases and bands, the new iPad Pro and the all-new Apple TV which begins shipping this week."
Record device sales and the iPhone still the engine behind Apple's growth
According to the press release published on Apple's Press Info website, the Cupertino tech giant reported quarterly revenue of $51.5 billion with a quarterly net profit of $11.1 billion. Also, Apple announced a 39.9% gross margin and that 62 percent of all revenue for Q4 2015 coming from sales on international markets.
As expected, the company's iPhone is still the main source of revenue, with Apple reporting sales of 300 million devices during the 2015 fiscal year, out of which 231 million being iPhones, 55 million iPads, and 21 million Macs.
This translates into a bigger global market share for both iPhones and Macs, following a trend set during the previous years, in spite of the ever shrinking market share of Apple's direct competitors.
Furthermore, as reported by Cook during the conference call, Apple "crossed 100 billion cumulative downloads from the App Store," and sales of 48 million iPhones during the fourth fiscal quarter of 2015, with a 22% increase in sales year-over-year.
Greater China, one of the two driving forces for Apple's record revenue and net profit reports
Due to the record launch sales for the iPhone 6s and 6s Plus at the end of the quarter and huge demand for these models, Greater China was Apple's fastest growing market with a 100% sales increase in the past few quarters, according to an analysis by The Verge.
Since the revenue drawn by Apple out of Greater China dwarfed all other regions for the past few fiscal quarters, this will most probably become a trend and will make out of Greater China and the iPhone business the driving forces behind Apple's growth in the next few years.
In case you have any doubt about China’s importance to Apple’s growth… pic.twitter.com/nSMkUSYYwd
— Jan Dawson (@jandawson) October 27, 2015
Stark reminder of how much Apple has an iPhone business, and then everything else… pic.twitter.com/iYJG2kJj3L
— Jan Dawson (@jandawson) October 27, 2015
