Apple's second quarter earnings beat market buzz as iPhone sales boom

Tech giant Apple on Thursday reported second-fiscal quarter earnings, beating Wall Street buzz, mostly supported by stronger-than-expected iPhone sales.

The company reported a profit of $24 billion and revenue of $94.8 billion in the first quarter of this year.

“We are pleased to report an all-time record in services and a March quarter record for iPhone despite the challenging macroeconomic environment," Apple chief executive Tim Cook said in an earnings release.

It must be noted that Apple recorded a decline in overall sales for the second straight quarter in a row. 

Apple stock surged by almost 2% during after trade and was further boosted after Apple released the forecast numbers for the current quarter.

Apple is reported to have not issued any formal guidance as usual. All they provide to the analysts is some data points.

Apple's iPhone sales increased 1.5% to $51.33 billion. Mac sales fell more than 30% to $7.17 billion. Sales in the wearables business, which includes devices like AirPods and the Apple Watch, fell less than 1% to $8.76 billion.

Apple's biggest growth segment was its services business, which includes products like iCloud and Apple Pay, which grew 5.5% to $20.9 billion.

CNBC quoted Apple finance chief Luca Maestri as saying: “The company expects overall revenue in the current quarter to decline about 3%”.

“We expect our June quarter year-over-year revenue performance to be similar to the March quarter assuming that the macroeconomic outlook does not worsen from what we are projecting today for the current quarter,” Maestri said on a call with analysts.

He added the company is facing macroeconomic challenges in digital advertising and mobile gaming, which is part of Apple’s services business.

The sales of the iPhone dominated Apple’s report. Sales of iPhones grew from the year-ago quarter even despite a decline of nearly 15% in the overall market at the same time, according to analysts.

IPhone revenue jumped 2% during the quarter that ended April 1, indicating that the shortage of parts and supply chain problems that had been causing hurdles in the growth had finally been addressed.

“It was quite a good quarter from an iPhone point of view, particularly relative to the market when you look at the market stats,” Cook told CNBC.  

Bloomberg has reported the iPhone maker could unveil a mixed-reality headset as soon as next month when it holds its annual software developer conference.

Cook said Apple now has 975 million subscribers on its platform, which includes both Apple services and third-party apps, up from 935 million last quarter and an increase of 150 million from a year ago.