Apple breaks Q3 records, while losing market share to Huawei

Apple has reported record third-quarter revenues of $ 53bn, driven by sales of iPhones and wearable devices.

Its iPhone sales grew by 20% in the quarter, while services revenue increased to $ 9.6bn.

Apple said revenue in its wearables product line, which includes the Apple Watch, Air Pods and Beats, had grown to $ 10bn over the past four quarters.

The company said Apple Pay was now available in 24 markets, supported by 4,900 bank partners, while its services segment, which includes digital content and services, AppleCare, Apple Pay, licensing and other services, reported revenue of $ 9.6bn, up 31% compared with the third quarter of 2017.

“Our Q3 results were driven by continued strong sales of iPhone, services and wearables, and we are very excited about the products and services in our pipeline,” said Apple CEO Tim Cook.

In a transcript of the earnings call posted on the Seeking Alpha financial blogging site, Cook claimed that the Apple App Store for IoS apps was more profitable for app developers than Google’s Android Play store. The Apple App Store, which launched a decade ago with the company’s first iPhone, has earned developers $ 100bn, he claimed.

When asked about how frequently existing customers were replacing their iPhones, especially given that cheap iPhone batteries are now readily available, Cook admitted some replacement cycles were lengthening.

“The major catalyst for that was probably the subsidy plans becoming a much smaller percentage of total sales around the world than they were at one time, so some are lengthening. But I think for us, the thing that we always have to do is come out with a really great innovative product, and I think iPhone X shows that when you deliver a great innovative product, there are enough people who would like that and it can be a really good business, so that’s how to look at that.”

Development efforts to enhance user experience

One of the areas Cook discussed during the earnings call was how Apple was working to make application development on MacOS more closely aligned with iOS, to stimulate application compatibility and support a similar user experience across Macs, iPads and iPhones.

“We want to empower our developers to bring their innovative apps from the iOS ecosystem to the Mac with minimal effort,” he said. “Though iOS and MacOS are different, they’ve shared common foundations from the very beginning, so we’ve taken key frameworks from iOS and adapted them to specific Mac behaviours like using a mouse or trackpad, resizing windows, copy and paste, and drag and drop.”

Cook also highlighted some of Apple’s development efforts to speed up the coding of machine learning (ML) and augmented reality (AR) applications.

“Developers will be able to build even more intelligent apps with just a few lines of code using the power of machine learning with Core ML 2 and Create ML,” he said.

Cook also introduced the third release of its ARKit augmented reality coding framework.

“We believe AR can enable profound experiences. With ARKit 2, iOS 12 will provide an even more powerful platform to make dynamic AR apps, integrating shared and persistent AR experiences, object detection and image tracking,” he said.

Apple introduces third iteration of its augmented reality coding framework, ARKit

Cook claimed Apple was unlikely to be affected by the US trade tariffs on steel and aluminium being put in place by the Trump administration and the risk of a trade war, but he said the company was assessing the potential impact of another proposed tariff.

“The fourth tariff, which includes goods valued at $ 200bn, also focuses on goods that are imported from China. We’re evaluating that one. It’s a tedious process, because you not only have to analyse the revenue products, but you also have to analyse the purchases you’re making through other companies that are not related to revenue,” he said.

Losing market share to Huawei

Although Apple posted a record quarter, analyst Canalys said Apple had dropped to third place in terms of market share. The second largest smartphone maker is now Huawei, while Samsung is the market leader.

Mo Jia, a Canalys analyst based in Shanghai, said Huawei’s strategy had evolved significantly over the past six months. It shipped seven million of its latest flagship products – the P20 and P20 Pro.

“Huawei has accelerated its adoption of new technologies this year, focusing on AI [artificial intelligence] with its NPU chipsets and on imaging with its triple-camera setup,” said Jia. “Its efforts have paid off. The P20 and P20 Pro sold faster than their predecessors in their launch quarter. Outside of China, the P20 and P20 Pro more than doubled the shipments of the P10 and P10 Plus.”

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U.S. probing Huawei for possible Iran sanctions violations: sources

NEW YORK/LONDON (Reuters) - Federal prosecutors in New York have been investigating since at least last year whether Chinese tech company Huawei Technologies Co Ltd [HWT.UL] violated U.S. sanctions in relation to Iran, according to sources familiar with situation.

FILE PHOTO: The Huawei logo is seen during the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Spain, February 26, 2018. REUTERS/Yves Herman/File Photo

The prosecutors have been investigating alleged shipping of U.S.-origin products to Iran and other countries in violation of U.S. export and sanctions laws, two of the sources said on condition of anonymity.

The probe, first reported by the Wall Street Journal on Wednesday, is being run out of the U.S. Attorney’s office in Brooklyn, the sources said. John Marzulli, a spokesman for the prosecutor’s office, would neither confirm nor deny the existence of the investigation.

The Department of Justice in Washington declined to comment.

Huawei, which makes handsets and telecommunications network equipment, said it complies with “all applicable laws and regulations where it operates, including the applicable export control and sanction laws and regulations of the UN, US and EU.”

News of the Justice Department probe follows a series of U.S. actions aimed at stopping or reducing access by Huawei and Chinese smartphone maker ZTE Corp (000063.SZ) to the U.S. economy amid allegations the companies could be using their technology to spy on Americans.

In February, Senator Richard Burr, the Republican chairman of the U.S. Senate Intelligence Committee, cited concerns about the spread of Chinese technologies in the United States, which he called “counterintelligence and information security risks that come prepackaged with the goods and services of certain overseas vendors.”

Republican Senators Marco Rubio and Tom Cotton have introduced legislation that would block the U.S. government from buying or leasing telecommunications equipment from Huawei or ZTE, citing concern the Chinese companies would use their access to spy on U.S. officials.

U.S. authorities last week banned American companies from selling to ZTE (000063.SZ) for seven years, saying the Chinese company had broken a settlement agreement related to Iran sanctions with repeated false statements - a move that threatens to cut off ZTE’s supply chain.

The ZTE ban was the result of its failure to comply with an agreement with the U.S. Commerce Department reached last year after it pleaded guilty in federal court to conspiring to violate U.S. sanctions by illegally shipping U.S. goods and technology to Iran.

In 2016, the Commerce Department made documents public that showed ZTE’s misconduct and also revealed how a second company, identified only as F7, had successfully evaded U.S. export controls.

In a 2016 letter to the Commerce Department, 10 U.S. lawmakers said they believed F7 to be Huawei, citing media reports.

In April 2017, lawmakers sent another letter to Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross asking for F7 to be publicly identified and fully investigated.

Reporting by Arjun Panchadar in Bengaluru, Karen Freifeld in New York, Eric Auchard in London; Editing by Frances Kerry and Paul Simao

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