Apple today reported first quarter 2023 earnings in what has been one of the company’s worst quarters in years. It was the company’s biggest drop since 2016 and the first since 2019. Total revenue was down more than 5 percent year-over-year as the company failed to match sales in the same quarter last year for most equipment categories.
iPhone revenue for the quarter was $65.78 billion, down 8.17% from last year. Similarly, “Other Products”including watches, AirPods, and some other emissions were down 8.3 percent year-on-year to $13.48 billion. The real underdog was Mac, which fell nearly 30 percent to $7.74 billion.
CEO Tim Cook said in the company’s earnings report that Apple is facing a “challenging macroeconomic environment.”In addition, he cited two other major factors behind the quarter’s decline: manufacturing and supply problems in China and a strong US dollar. Apple has struggled to meet consumer demand for many of its products, with deliveries sometimes delayed by weeks. Cook said that while Apple could have matched analyst estimates if supply issues weren’t a factor, it’s impossible to know for sure.
On the other hand, Apple says it has now resolved many of these supply issues, with 2 billion active Apple devices now in the hands of users around the world. And obviously, revenue of $117.15 billion for the quarter is still huge, even if it fell short of expectations or fell short of last year.
Apple declined to release forecasts for the next quarter. This has not happened in any quarter since the start of the pandemic in 2020.