On May 3rd, Apple released its revenue report for the second quarter of 2024 (as of March 30th, 2024). The report shows that Apple's revenue for the quarter was $90.75 billion, a year-on-year decrease of 4%; Net profit was $23.636 billion, a year-on-year decrease of 2%.
Among them, iPhone revenue was $45.96 billion, a year-on-year decrease of 10%, but it still accounts for half of Apple's revenue; IPad revenue declined by 16.7% to $5.56 billion; The revenue from wearable devices, home furnishings, and accessories was 7.91 billion US dollars, a year-on-year decline; Mac's revenue was 7.45 billion yuan, exceeding expectations of 6.79 billion US dollars.
Service revenue, including Apple Music, TV+streaming platforms, iCloud subscriptions, and App Store businesses, increased by 14.2% year-on-year in the second quarter to $23.87 billion, reaching a new high for five consecutive quarters. This is also Apple's highest profit margin business at present, accounting for 20% of its total revenue.
Looking at different regions, among the top five global markets for Apple, only the European market maintained year-on-year growth. Among them, the revenue in Greater China was 16.37 billion US dollars, a year-on-year decrease of 8.1%, which is related to the weak sales of the iPhone 15 series.
According to data released by third-party market research firm Counterpoint, Apple's sales in the Chinese market declined by 19% in the first quarter, and its market share fell from first to third, the lowest level since 2020. An important background is that Apple's main competitor in the high-end market, Huawei, is seeing an increase in smartphone sales, with a year-on-year growth of over 70%.
However, Apple's business performance in Greater China last quarter has already exceeded analyst expectations. Wall Street had previously predicted that Apple's performance in Greater China would decline by more than double digits in the quarter.
Despite facing challenges in the Chinese market, Apple CEO Cook still expressed confidence in the Chinese market. At the conference call after the financial report, he said that China is the most competitive market in the world, but in the extremely fierce competition, the sales of iPhone in Chinese Mainland in the last quarter still achieved growth.
"I am still very optimistic about the future development of the Chinese market. We are not focusing on the next one or two weeks of development, but more on long-term development." Cook also emphasized that according to Kantar's data, the two best-selling smartphones in urban areas of China this quarter are the iPhone 15 and iPhone 15 Pro Max.
In March of this year, Cook returned to China after a year and attended the opening ceremony of Shanghai's eighth official Apple retail store and China's highest specification Apple flagship store. He also met with several important supplier leaders at the same time, including BYD Chairman Wang Chuanfu, Lansi Technology Chairman Zhou Qunfei, and Changying Precision General Manager Chen Xiaoshuo.
Apple expects sales to grow at a low single digit percentage in the second quarter of this year, and its iPad and services business is expected to grow at a double-digit rate, but has not made any predictions on iPhone performance.
At the same time as the financial report was released, Apple's board of directors also approved the largest ever stock repurchase plan, which will repurchase an additional $110 billion in stocks. Perhaps affected by this news, Apple's stock price surged by about 7% after trading on Thursday.