Apple Needs to Hone Its Post-IPhone Pitch
It has to show that add-on products and services can continue growing now that smartphone sales aren’t.
Pay no attention to the iPhone.
Photographer: Drew Angerer/Getty Images
Apple Inc. doesn’t want investors to fixate any longer on the iPhone, the world-changing product that delivers about two-thirds of the company’s revenue. Nope. It’s over it. The iPhone is bo-ring.
Not coincidentally, the iPhone is boring because sales are going in reverse. As the company predicted, Apple said Tuesday that iPhone revenue dropped 14.9 percent in its fiscal first quarter ended in December. Total company revenue fell 4.5 percent, and the company’s forecast implies a decline of as much as 10 percent in the March quarter. (Investors were relieved the forecast wasn’t worse, sending shares higher after the company’s announcement.)