Apoorv Anupam
02 November 2018, India:
Apple will no longer share how many units of iPhones, iPads, Macs it sells. The unit sales report from Apple was used by many analysts.
“As we have stated many times, our objective is to make great products and services that enrich people’s lives, and to provide an unparalleled customer experience, so that our users are highly satisfied, loyal, and engaged,” Luca Maestri, Chief Financial Officer, Apple said on Thursday’s earnings call .
Luca Maestri added, “As demonstrated by our financial performance in recent years, the number of units sold in any 90-day period is not necessarily representative of the underlying strength of our business. Furthermore, our unit of sale is less relevant for us today than it was in the past given the breadth of our portfolio and the wider sales price dispersion within any given product line.”
Maestri further said, “Given the rationale on why we do not believe that providing unit sales is particularly relevant for our company at this point, I can reassure you that it is our objective to grow unit sales for every product category that we have. But as I said earlier, a unit of sale is less relevant today than it was in the past. To give you an example, the unit sales of iPhone at the top end of the line have been very strong during the September quarter.”
Citi analyst Jim Suva said, “It sounds like you’re still going to give revenue data if I heard that correctly. But some people may fear that this now means that the iPhone units are going to start going negative year-over-year because it’s easy to talk about great things and not show the details of things that aren’t so great.”
Tim Cook, CEO, Apple said, “Our installed base is growing at double-digit.”
Cook added, “And so there’s no — and that’s probably a much more significant metric for us from an ecosystem point of view and customer loyalty, et cetera. The second thing is, this is a little bit like if you go to the market and you push your cart up to the cashier and she says or he says, ‘How many units you have in there?’ It doesn’t matter a lot how many units there are in there in terms of the overall value of what’s in the cart.”
Recently, the sales of iPhones, iPads and Macs have gone down. This might be the reason behind Apple’s decision of not sharing unit sales report.
Apple has not shared the unit sales of Apple Watch, Airpods in past. Not all smartphone companies share their sales report. The transparency by Apple was liked by many people including analysts. Now the new news might disappoint them.
(Image – qz.com)