As The Inquirer reports, Apple has had a great past three months. It has enjoyed healthy iPhone sales, increased Mac shipments and nearly 50 percent more revenue from products including the iPod and Apple TV. Mac sales totaled 4.7 million during the period, exceeding the 4.5 million of the last quarter and the 4.4 million of Q3 2014.
Apple did not release any exact sales figures for the Apple Watch, leaving everyone oblivious to exactly how successful the wearable has been. Instead, Tim Cook said only that it had “exceeded internal expectations” and was off to a “great start.” With neither of those phrases explained more, analysts will still be acting on previous estimates of demand.
Only the iPad let the earnings call down. Continuing its downward trend, iPad sales decreased from 13.3 million in the same time last year and 12.6 million last quarter to a total of just 10.9 million units. iPad sales have been flagging in the face of stiff competition from other premium tablets that have become more attractive to business users, such as Microsoft’s Surface Pro 3.
From Microsoft’s perspective, Surface proved to be one of the biggest wins for the quarter, exhibiting a 117 percent revenue increase to $888 million. This was enough to get the leader of Surface, Panos Panay, a promotion to overall head of Microsoft’s premium hardware.
Although several other of the company’s divisions also reported healthy growth, including Office 365 and Xbox, Microsoft ultimately had to post a $2.1 billion loss as a result of its $7.5 billion write-down of the assets it acquired from Nokia.
Microsoft reported increased sales of these Windows Phone Lumia smartphones but revenue fell over last year because they sold nearly entirely low-end devices. Overall, Microsoft posted $22.2 billion in revenue while Apple reported $48 billion revenue and total cash reserves of $200 billion.
