InsightaaS: Across the Net often highlights posts from Horace Dediu’s ASYMCO blog, an interesting source of insight into issues pertaining to Apple, and to the smartphone and related markets generally. This post, Apple’s Growth Scorecard, illustrates Dediu’s extensive understanding of Apple. He notes that the company’s growth, while in line with guidance, reflects a flattening growth curve for iPhones and iPads, which account for the bulk of the company’s growth. Readers interested in learning more may wish to also peruse Dediu’s recent post Fortune 130, which breaks down Apple’s iTunes revenue, concluding that “The iTunes “empire” of content and services would be ranked as number 130 in the Fortune 500 ranking of companies (slightly below Alcoa and above Eli Lilly).”
Apple revenues grew at the rate of about 6% in Q4, while earnings grew at 5%. These were improvements over Q3 and Q2 but the rate of top line growth is has not been this low since 2009. The bottom line is also slower than it’s been for the entire “epoch” or era of the iPhone.
The components of sales growth are shown in the following table: [editor’s note – not reproduced here in Across the Net]
The company delivered performance inline with its own guidance so there should not have been surprises in the top and bottom lines. However, the disappointment might be in the low growth for iPhone (at 6%) and iPad (at 7%). The Mac and iTunes grew at moderate rates (16% and 19% respectively) while the iPod continued its decline with -55% growth and Accessories remained fairly flat…
Read the entire post: http://www.asymco.com/2014/02/05/apples-growth-scorecard-3/
