Apple Inc. (AAPL) Stock Falls After Earnings Result

Earnings fell 19 percent to $1.67 per share. Shares were up in after-hours trading as the company also gave a stronger-than-expected outlook for the first quarter of fiscal 2017.

Mr. Cybart, the independent analyst, said the revenue projection for the current quarter implies that Apple expects iPhone unit sales to increase more than 5% from a year earlier, when the iPhone 6S was its newest model.

Chief Financial Officer Luca Maestri said in a phone interview with Reuters it was “impossible to know” if there was any effect yet from rival Samsung Electronics Co Ltd halting production of its fire-prone Galaxy Note 7 phones earlier this month.

Square, Inc. (NYSE:SQ) will release financial results for the third quarter of 2016 on November 1, 2016, after market close.

Another sore point was the Greater China region, where revenue tumbled almost 30 percent after falling by a third in the previous three months. Neil Cybart, an independent analyst who follows Apple, said there is an eight-week wait for some models. As Apple reports its fiscal Q4 earnings this week, how the iPhone 7 is doing will likely be top of mind.

iPad sales also continue to fall, dropping from 9.9 million in the last quarter to 9.3 million in the last three months. Apple now has an install base in excess of one billion devices (when you take into account iPhones, iPads, Macs, iPods, Apple TVs, and Apple Watches), and Apple says its customers are spending more now on apps and services than ever before.

“Especially in light of the Note 7 fiasco, I think there is a lot of focus to see what types of market share gains Apple has, with iPhone 7 now in their back pocket”, Dan Ives, senior vice president of finance and corporate development at the mobile cloud services company Synchronoss Technologies, told CNBC. Apple announced it had 17 million subscribers at the iPhone 7 launch event in September.

Apple revenues fell 7.7% for the full fiscal year, which is the first time that has happened since 2001.

The company sold 45.5 million iPhones in its fiscal Q4, a 5% drop vs the period past year.

The good news is that this sales decline may prove to be a blip and not the new norm. In an ironically Microsoft-y problem, Apple’s shares are largely unchanged in the past year, and in the past two years are only up around 12%. Apple beat estimates by 2% last quarter and delivered better-than-expected results for 3 of the last 4 quarters.

As the iPhone comes under pressure from rising competition and falling growth in the handset space, it is becoming heavily reliant on upgrades.