Apple reported robust growth in iPad sales in the third quarter and announced a strong forecast for 2017 iPhone sales, likely to be announced in September. Apple announced revenues for the quarter ending July 1, 2017, came in at $45.4 billion beating Wall Street expectation of $44.89 billion. Apple has now sold 1.2 billion iPhones since its launch in 2007.
In the third quarter, Apple sold 41 million iPhones, 11.4 million iPads and 4.29 million Mac devices. The iPad revenue came in at $4.9 million, a sequential growth of 28 percent while the iPhone revenues contracted 19 percent to $24.8 million. The Mac revenues for the quarter saw 2 percent growth to $5.5 million. Interestingly, the services revenue which includes non-hardware things came in at $7.2 million, a 22 percent jump from the same period last year.
The revenue from other products, which includes Apple Watch, Apple TV and Beats accessories came in at $2.7 million, a marginal decline of 5 percent from last quarter. As expected, Apple didn't disclose Apple Watch sales but it claimed that sales were up over 50 percent in the quarter.
During the earnings call, Apple CEO Tim Cook highlighted that his company is bullish and very optimistic about the opportunities in India. "We are investing in India, we've already launched an app accelerator centre. That's on top of working with the channel and looking at expanding our go-to-market in general. And we began to produce the iPhone SE there during the quarter, and we're really happy with how that's going. And so we're bringing all of our energies to bear there. I see a lot of similarities to where China was several years ago," Cook said.
Cook also highlighted the company's progress in the augmented reality space with the launch of ARKit at WWDC in June. "It's clear that ARKit has captured the imagination of our developer community," Cook said and indicated further announcements during the iPhone launch event. He also reiterated that autonomous car project remains company's biggest AI project yet and it won't be limited to vehicles.
In terms of demography, the Greater China markets continue to be a concern for the company with revenues declining 25 percent over the previous quarter. Apple says it expects the fourth quarter revenues to be between $49 billion and $52 billion indicating a strong demand for the next iPhone.