Apple Q3 revenues rise to $37.4B, iPhones, Mac sales soar but iPads continues to slide

Tech giant Apple Inc has reported revenue of $37.4 billion for the third quarter ended June 28, 2014 revenue, up 6 per cent compared to $35.3 billion in the same quarter last year but declined 18 per cent sequentially compared to the second quarter ended March 29, 2014.

Greater China, which includes China, Hong Kong and Taiwan, was the sole bright spot growing 28 per cent year-on-year but sported the sharpest slide sequentially declining by over a third. Rest of Asia Pacific, which includes India, grew 6 per year Y-o-Y but declined 18 per cent over Q2.

The revenue increase over last year was powered by its Macs and iPhones, whose unit sales grew 18 per cent and 13 per cent, respectively, Y-o-Y. Sequentially Mac sales rose 7 per cent but iPhone shipments declined by 19 per cent.

Its other key product iPads declined again, both sequentially and Y-o-Y. Apple sold 15.3 million iPads in Q3, compared to 14.6 million in the same quarter last year. However, iPad sales grew in the developing markets with particularly strong year-over-year growth in the Middle-East (64 per cent), China (51 per cent) and India (45 per cent). Mac sales also grew in double digits in India last quarter.

Overall profit for the three month period increased 12.2 per cent to $7.7 billion from $6.9 billion in the year-ago quarter.

Gross margin was 39.4 per cent, compared to 36.9 percent last year. International sales accounted for 59 per cent of the quarter's revenue.

"Our record June quarter revenue was fuelled by strong sales of iPhone and Mac and the continued growth of revenue from the Apple ecosystem, driving our highest EPS growth rate in seven quarters," Apple's CEO Tim Cook said.

"We are incredibly excited about the upcoming releases of iOS 8 and OS X Yosemite, as well as other new products and services that we can't wait to introduce," he added.

Turning to iPad, we sold 15.3 million units, compared to 14.6 million in the June quarter last year. "We generated $10.3 billion in cash flow from operations and returned over $8 billion in cash to shareholders through dividends and share repurchases during the June quarter," Apple's CFO Luca Maestri said. "We have now taken action on over $74 billion of our $130 billion capital return program with six quarters remaining to its completion."

Apple's board of directors has also declared a cash dividend of $0.47 per share of the company's common stock. The dividend is payable on August 14, 2014, to shareholders of record as of the close of business on August 11, 2014.