Apple has reported its latest financial results, for the first quarter of its 2016 fiscal year, which includes sales generated over the all-important holiday season.
At first glance, things seem to have gone pretty well for the company, as it booked a record $18.4 billion of net profit, on record quarterly revenues of $75.9 billion. But scratch beneath the surface of those big numbers, and things start to look a bit different.
Breaking down sales figures for its key product lines, Apple revealed that it sold 74.8 million iPhones in the three months ending December 26, 2015 - and any way you slice it, that's a huge number of handsets. But what's significant about that figure is that it represents almost no year-on-year growth for the iPhone line; during the same quarter in 2015, the company sold 74.5m units.
Some analysts recently predicted a difficult year ahead for the company as growth in the overall smartphone market slows, particularly at the high end. Reports indicated that Apple had cut back on orders of its latest iPhones amid lower-than-expected sales.
On the company's earnings call today, its CEO, Tim Cook, acknowledged that Apple expects iPhone sales to actually fall next quarter.
The company's figures also show that sales of its Mac computers dipped by 4% year-on-year, as well as falling by 7% compared with the previous quarter.
But the really bad news - at least, as bad as it can get for a company that's just reported record revenues and profits - was for the iPad range.
While iPad sales were up by 63% over the previous quarter - which isn't entirely unexpected, given the boost provided by Black Friday and Christmas shopping - they fell spectacularly compared with fiscal Q1 2015, dropping by a massive 25% year-on-year.
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