Breaking: Apple Earnings Beat Street Expectations

Wrapping up another successful quarter for Apple, the company reported after the market close today that quarterly earnings per share exceeded analysts’ expectations, and a slightly lower than expected total revenue. Despite the EPS beat, many believe that the era of unprecedented growth is coming to a close for the company.

Apple reported $75.9 billion in revenue and earnings of $3.28 per share for the first quarter. The numbers represent a record quarter for Apple with respect to revenue, but slightly under what analysts were expecting– earnings of $3.23 per share and revenue of $76.6 billion.

One of the biggest concerns for investors came in their iPhone sales data. Apple reported sales of 74.8 million units, just short of the 75 million mark expected by analysts. It seems that iPhone sales may have finally begun to slow as they reach saturation and face slowing growth in China.

Apple sold 16.1 million iPads during the quarter, falling short of another expected mark. Mac sales came in at 5.3 million units, which missed expectations as well. Both of these figures represented declines from the first quarter last year. It remains to be seen as to what the iPad Pro will do to iPad sales, which have also slowed considerably.

While Apple relies on iPhone sales as their biggest money maker, recent world economic conditions threaten this crucial hardware division. During the conference call, Tim Cook said,

“We’re seeing extreme conditions just about everywhere we look, major markets including Brazil, Russia, Japan… have been impacted by slowing economic growth, falling commodity prices and weakening currency… We saw softness in China, noticeably in Hong Kong.”

Apple’s stock was decimated in 2015 and the company looks to regain investor confidence in 2016.