In a spectacular fashion that befits Apple, the tech giant made a jaw-dropping revelation in its quarterly results call. The company revealed that they have 900 million active iPhones worldwide, which is a significant chunk of the total 1.4 billion active Apple devices around the globe.
Apple CFO Luca Maestri said that the number is the result of an increase of 75 million during 2018. This is a never-before-done announcement because … well, Apple has never disclosed its iPhone base before. Maestri added that from now on, we can expect the data on Apple base to be updated regularly.
Currently, the number of units in Apple’s install base comes to a whopping 1.4 billion. However, apart from disclosing the number of active iPhones, the break out figures for Macs, iPads, or Apple Watch wasn’t revealed.
It comes as no surprise though, since it is well known how heavily dependent the company is on its iPhone sales. However, the company took a hit when the Q4 results were announced, revealing that sales had dropped from $61.1 billion to $52 billion leading to a drop in revenue from $88.3 billion to $84.3 billion.
Apple CEO Tim Cook has already warned about the “lower than anticipated iPhone revenue, primarily in China.” The unexpected drop in sales accounted for “all of our revenue shortfalls to our guidance and for much more than our entire year-over-year revenue decline.” He added that the factors that led to such unimpressive results included “foreign exchange headwinds,” and “economic weakness in emerging markets.” They also didn’t expect the discounted battery replacement program to generate about 11 times more traffic than anticipated.
To add to their woes, their sales performance in India hasn’t been stellar either. They recently slipped to third place behind OnePlus and Samsung in the premium smartphone segment with a market share of just 23 percent.
With such numbers, the plan to reverse their results was set in motion. Apple has made a string of plans and sealed some deals, one of which is to manufacture premium iPhones in the country to cut down on import taxes. This move is expected to change their fate, at least in India. Now, all we have to do is wait and see how it all plays out.
