Apple Vice President Greg Joswiak introduces the iPhone SE during an event at the Apple headquarters in Cupertino, California March 21, 2016. (Photo/Agencies)
Apple Inc on Tuesday released fiscal results for the second quarter of 2016, which showed the first year-over-year slump of both quarterly revenue and profit since 2003 and the first ever drop in iPhone sales.
The Cupertino, California-base company posted quarterly revenue of 50.6 billion U.S. dollars, a 33 percent drop from the first quarter and down 13 percent from a year ago. Its quarterly net income decreased 22 percent from one year ago to 10.5 billion dollars.
Apple's sales in America, Europe, the Greater China region and the rest of Asia-Pacific declined, compared to the same quarter of 2015, with the biggest drop, 26 percent, recorded in Greater China, Apple's largest overseas market. International sales accounted for 67 percent of the quarter's revenue.
Apple sold about 51.2 million iPhones during the second quarter, 32 percent fewer than the previous quarter and 16 percent fewer than one year ago. The first ever iPhone sales slide happened as predicted earlier by the company.
Still, iPhone sales represented the primary source of revenue for Apple, amounting to 32.9 billion dollars in the second quarter.
While revenues from iPad and Mac also fell, Apple's services business proved to be a rare bright spot in the quarterly results, generating a revenue of year-over-year 20 percent increase in sales from Internet services, Apple Pay, licensing and other services.
"Our team executed extremely well in the face of strong macroeconomic headwinds," said Tim Cook, Apple's chief executive officer, adding that the continued strong growth in revenue from services was a result of Apple's ecosystem and the growing base of over 1 billion active devices.
The company reported operating cash flow of 11.6 billion dollars and decided to return 10 billion dollars to shareholders through its capital return program.
With second-quarter results disappointing investors, Apple shares dropped about 8 percent in after-hour trading.
