In a dramatic end to the latest fiscal quarter, the world’s largest tech giant has seen record sales across the globe. Far surpassing Wall Street predictions, this last financial quarter has seen an all-time high for this time of the year.
Generally, Apple’s sales soar during the holiday season, particularly with the launch of new products (iPhone 6 in last year’s case), after which it takes a downward turn. The trend for this season is entirely different though, with a higher rate of conversions for iPhone users in the first quarter of 2015 than ever before.
A stupendous 61.2 million iPhones have been sold in 2015, bringing revenues of $40.3 billion, despite only 20% users having upgraded to the latest iPhone 6 and iPhone 6+.
With 4.6 million Macs sold and a record number of sales through iTunes, the company’s success streak shows no signs of abating. Even the slightly disappointing sales in iPads has not left any remarkable effect on overall profit margins, with 12.6 million people buying the new iPad and many more expressing the desire to do so in the coming months.
The latest addition of the Apple Smart watch, which has only recently been introduced, didn’t get the scope to leave an impact on sales for the past quarter.
An important factor for the latest boost in sales comes from China, which has emerged as the second highest market for Apple products after the United States. Revenues from China have grown by a whopping 71% or $16.8 billion, largely from iPhones sales.
Raising its quarterly dividend, Apple boosted share repurchase program from $90 billion to $140 billion this year. Ending the quarter with about $193.5 billion, Apple promises estimated returns of $200 billion to shareholders by March, 2017.