During its final fiscal quarter for this year, Apple sold a remarkable 5.3 million Macs. Tim Cook, the company’s CEO, ascribed this to the launch of their latest laptop models.
Cook essentially confirmed what Bryan Chaffin, the firm’s TMO, has been quoted as saying for more than a year: if Apple launches new Mac models, customers will buy them.
Mac sales accounted for around $25.8bn of the company’s income during the quarter under review. Analysts expected Apple to sell about 5 million Macs during this period, which means actual sales were nearly 300,000 units higher.
Before the latest laptop updates, Mac update cycles could be measured in years instead of months. One can only hope that the terrible drought of 2016 and 2017 is something of the past as far as Macs are concerned.
With the MacBook Pro model that introduced the touch bar released last fall and receiving an update a few months ago, the strong possibility of the iMac Pro being released before the end of 2017 and a redesigned Mac Pro in the pipeline, Apple appears to be moving in the correct direction.
What we need to see now is more closely staggered product updates, including iMac updates. The Mac Mini also urgently needs a major update, because the present model was released in 2014. In the three years since then, major technological advancements occurred, making the Mac Mini uncompetitive in the current market. By a long way.
The Cupertino-based giant reported revenues of $52.6bn during the fourth fiscal quarter of this year. This represents an increase of 12% compared to the same period last year. Apart from the 5.3 million Macs it sold, the company also sold 10.3 million iPads and around 46.7 million iPhones.
At the time of writing Apple shares were trading at $172.25 after they closed at $168.11 the previous day.