Apple's Q2 earnings report showed the company's worst year-over-year (YOY) growth during the past decade. However, the sales figures could have been worse based on forecasts from sources such as the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) that the California company was cutting iPhone production runs in the December quarter, and slashing them by 30 percent in the March quarter. Other tech giants including Samsung and Facebook also recently reported earnings figures for the March quarter.
Japan's Nikkei and the WSJ had reported the production cuts for Apple's smartphone. In fact, the new iPhone 6s sold a little better than the iPhone 6 did during the last quarter of 2014 even though Apple had to deal with unfavorable currency exchange rates across most of its global sales regions, according to Apple Insider.
iPhone's YOY sales were down in the March quarter. However, it was higher than the iPhone 5s cycle, and much higher than the forecasted 30 percent slash in production.
Apple's lower sales figures do not seem to represent the fall of the Roman Empire. In fact, PC shipments also dropped in 2009 due to factors such as the growth of tablets and smartphones, but did not plummet until a few years later.
In contast, there do not seem to be any game-changing mobile devices that are affecting the sales of iPads or iPhones. This is despite Apple critics such as Nick Farrell claiming that Chinese smartphone customers are choosing handsets from HTC and Samsung due to the units' superior form and function.
Farrell argued that Apple's annual iPhone sales of 51.2 million units was a low figure. In fact, iPhone remains in the top five best-selling handset manufactures in China, although HTC and Samsung are far lower on the list.
In fact, Samsung's Q1 earnings report showed mobile profits that were about one-quarter of Apple's. Meanwhile, Facebook reported $5.38 billion in Q1 revenue, but Apple earned twice as much serving its smaller user base compared to Facebook's 1.65 billion monthly active users (MAUs).
Nevertheless, billionaire investor Carl Icahn announced on CNBC on April 28, Thursday that he had sold every Apple share he owned and earned a $2 billion profit, according to The Guardian. He believes the Chinese government's blocking of Apple will cause a "tsunami" of trouble.
Here's an iPhone SE review: