iPhone X sales defy Wall Street projections as Apple posts $61.1 billion quarterly revenue

By Gadjo Cardenas Sevilla

Apple held its second quarter earnings call yesterday and dispelled any notions that the iPhone, it's most profitable product line, is slowing down in sales. The big surprise was that it was the iPhone X, which is the company's most innovative product and also its most expensive, was the bestseller for the quarter.

“We’re thrilled to report our best March quarter ever, with strong revenue growth in iPhone, Services and Wearables,” said CEO Tim Cook. “Customers chose iPhone X more than any other iPhone each week in the March quarter, just as they did following its launch in the December quarter. We also grew revenue in all of our geographic segments, with over 20% growth in Greater China and Japan.”

"We were surprised somewhat that through all of this period of time that the iPhone X winds up as the [best] selling, most popular [device] for every week ... since the launch" in November, Cook said Tuesday during a conference call with analysts.

Great Pretenders: Some of the Android handsets copying the iPhone X notch for no good reason.

A lot of the skepticism surrounding the iPhone X comes from analysts citing reduced production or slowing component sales, which have led to speculations of slowing demand. iPhone unit sales rose 2.9 percent to 52.2 million with the more expensive iPhone X outselling other products in the portfolio. The iPhone X features an innovative TrueDepth front facing camera that serves as a FaceID camera.

This feature necessitates a notch on the almost edge-ro-edge OLED display. For better or worse, the notch has become the defining feature of the iPhone X and has been copied ad nauseum by dozens of Android handset makers, even if those phones don't feature as robust a facial recognition feature.

"Since we split the line with the launch of iPhone 6 and 6 Plus back in 2014, this is the first cycle that we've ever had where the top of the line iPhone model has also been the most popular," Cook said crushing any notion that the more expensive iPhone X would be left languishing in store shelves. It seems the iPhone 8 and iPhone 8 Plus, which feature similar specs but use an older form factor, are the models that need various gimmicks, like a flashy red coloured variant, to generate more interest and sales.

Other revenue streams for Apple include Services which encompass app store, iTunes, subscriptions and cloud services as well as wearables, which focuses on Apple Watch.

Source: CNet.com