This is Tim: Cook on Apple’s third-quarter earnings
Editor’s Note: As he usually does, Tim Cook took part in Apple’s Tuesday conference call with Wall Street analysts to discuss Apple’s quarterly earnings. And as we usually do, we lifted some of the choice things Apple’s CEO had to say about his company’s fortunes.
On growth in China
The growth in Asia-Pacific was 25 percent, and that majority of the difference in our sequential growth rate was a result of Greater China, which represents about two-thirds of our revenue for the region. As we reported for [the second quarter], our Greater China revenue was $7.9 billion, and in Q3, our revenue was $5.7 billion. Now, that $5.7 billion is 48 percent year-over-year increase, so it still is growing at incredible rates. Virtually all of the $2.2 billion sequential revenue decline was due to iPhone sales in Greater China. About half of that [$2.2 billion] is attributable to changes in channel inventory, not the underlying sell-through with the iPhone.
As a reminder, in the previous quarter, in the fiscal Q2, we launched the iPhone 4S in China in January. We added China Telecom as a second carrier in March, and, as we proceeded across the quarter, we increased channel inventory to accommodate the sales and to reach our target inventory of four-to-six weeks. The remainder of the sequential revenue decline is mainly attributable to normal seasonality after the very successful iPhone 4S launch. We did not see an obvious impact in Q3 that we would associate with the economy in Mainland China. We look at the economic reports as all of you do and see the troughs, but again, we did not see anything that we would attribute to the economy in China.
In terms of iPhones in general in Mainland China, we were incredibly pleased with our results; we were up over 100 percent year-over-year. As you probably know, just last Friday, in [the fiscal fourth quarter], we launched our new iPad in China, after we resolved the iPad trademark issue, and so sales didn’t benefit from iPad the June quarter in Mainland China. Also, our new portables that we announced at the Worldwide Developers Conference began to ship in Mainland China last week, after we received routine inventory approval, so once again, the June quarter sales didn’t benefit from these products. We remain really confident about our plans and are very excited about our opportunities in China, and are very much looking forward to incorporating more local services, as you probably saw in our [WWDC] announcement of iOS 6, which will be coming in the fall.
On iPhone demand
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