Apple Inc. (AAPL): The Data Behind The Slowdown

Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL)’s growth has been slowing down but exactly by how much? According to its latest earnings release, the business still sells 420,562 iPhones, 218,843 iPads, 44,404 Macs and 63,295 iPods – all in a single day, every day, which is phenomenal to say the least. But the extraordinary growth figures — which used to pump its stock price and hence its market cap – are now history. In fact, the quarterly revenue growth is nearing a high single-digit number. The music is certainly slowing down, but for its rival SAMSUNG ELECT LTD(F) (NASDAQOTH:SSNLF) the party isn’t over yet.

Two years ago, in Q2-2011, Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL) reported growth of more than 80%; in its most recent quarter, Apple barely managed double digit growth as its revenue increased by just 11.27% to $43.6 billion.

During the quarter, Apple recorded an increase in revenue in all of its geographic operating segments with Asia Pacific (excluding China and Japan) posting the largest increase in sales while revenues in Americas, its biggest market, increased by only 6.6%; last year, this figure was 41%.
Back then, Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL) did not report China’s numbers separately as this market used to be a part of its Asia Pacific segment. In Q2-2012, the biggest change came from Asia Pacific region whose revenues increased by 114% or $5.4 billion. A year later, in Q3-2012, the Asia Pacific region, including Greater China, showed growth of just 12%. As is evident from the table below, Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL)’s growth is seriously slowing down in all of its markets.

In the previous quarter, none of the geographic regions could manage to put a $1 billion increase in the firm’s top line, not even Americas. The largest growth numbers have come from the European market whose revenues have gone up by $993 million.

In Q2-2013, iPhone’s sales increased by just 3% to $22.9 billion as the number of units sold showed a modest growth of 6.7%. On the other hand, iPad’s sales jumped by almost 40% to $8.7 billion as the number of tablets sold rose 65% to reach 19.5 million units.

On the other hand, nothing seems to be stopping the South Korean consumer electronics behemoth and Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL)’s biggest rival Samsung. In its first quarter, according to Strategy Analytics, the business shipped 69.4 million smartphones representing an impressive increase of 56% from last year – that is 290 million more than Apple’s total quarterly shipments of iPhone, iPad, Mac and iPod combined.