Apple delivers biggest ever quarter, but sales slump nears

Apple shifted 74.8m handsets during the quarter, up 0.4 per cent year-on-year, the lowest growth since the iPhone’s launch in 2007.

In a statement, Apple said it expected revenue to be between $50 and $53 billion between January and March, down from $58 billion in the first quarter of 2015.

Analysts predicted that demand for Apple’s latest iPhones, the 6S and 6S Plus, had been weak in the period leading up to the earnings announcement.

Overall this helped Apple deliver full-quarter revenues of $75.9bn, a two percent increase on the $74.6bn in Q1 2015.

Apple pointed to flailing in the Chinese consumer market, now a crucial region for iPhone sales, as a culprit behind the sluggish growth.

While the results are up from revenue of $US74.6 billion and net income of $18 billion in the year-ago quarter, Cupertino remained cautious for the year ahead, predicting that revenue will decline in the next quarter, the company’s first drop in years. Sales of iPad tablets dropped to 16.1 million during the holiday quarter, much below the projected sales of 17.3 million.

“I do think (services are) probably something that the investment community would want to and should focus more on”, Cook said, according to the WSJ.

Daniel Ives, managing director at FBR Capital Markets, told ABC News that softness – that’s a saturation in smartphones on the market with fewer buyers – will be a challenge for Apple and its competitors.

The manufacturer also revealed its active installed base of iPhone, iPad, Mac, iPod, Apple TV and Apple Watch users recently hit the one billion milestone recently within a 90 day period. Apple services, such as the App Store, iCloud and Apple Pay, increased to $6.05 billion in the quarter, marking a massive 26 percent increase year over year. Some analysts remain optimistic in Apple’s ability to drive growth amid the troublesome economy. “Other Products”, which includes the Apple Watch and Apple TV, grew its revenue 62 percent year-over-year, bringing in 4.3 billion this quarter.

Tech giant Apple has seen its slowest growth ever and far from the double-digit growth investors have come to expect as the new iPhones face tough competition from their earlier versions.