Apple strokes a last jab to 2017 as the American technology firm tosses ‘the most powerful Mac ever’ – iMac Pro – into the market for pro users who need workstation class performance for their taxing workflows.
iMac Pro is the fastest and most powerful machine Apple has ever developed. It features Xeon processors up to 18 cores, up to 22 Teraflops of graphics performance, and 27-inch Retina 5K display.
Uncloaked at Worldwide Developers conference (WWDC) 2017, the pocket-lightening desktop computer starts from $4,999 and goes up to over $13,000 – cooking it the most expensive desktop computer.
The prized device delivers fastest speed to several professionals – 3D designers (3.4x), Developers (2.4x), scientists and researchers (5x), photographers (4.1x), music producers (4.6x), and video editors (3x).
Analysts believe that iMac Pro is price appropriately fixed as compared to other systems available with the same features. The biggest drawback of the iMac Pro is that it cannot be upgraded once purchased.
Apple Financial Statistics
Growth in Services (23%), iPhone (3%), and Mac (13%) aided Apple to pull a net sales growth of 6% or $13.4 billion against year-over-year growth of -8% – to $229.2 billion in fiscal year (FY) 2017.
Sustaining Apple’s business ritual, most of the revenue (62% or $143.3 billion) came from the 216.8 million units of iPhone sales. The company also sold 43.8 million units of iPad and 19.3 million units of Mac during the year.
Apple paid dividends of $12.6 billion and $12 billion in 2017 and 2016 respectively. Americas (42%↑), Europe (24%↑), Greater China (20%↓), Japan (≈8%), and Rest of Asia Pacific (7%↓) were the main geographic operating segments of the net sales for the American technology giant.
Americas include both North and South Americas; Europe includes European countries as well as India, Middle East, and Africa; Greater China includes China, Taiwan, and Hong Kong; and Rest of Asia Pacific includes the Australia and other Asian countries.
The iPhone maker recorded net sales of 37% and 63% domestically and internationally respectively during the year. In fact China, along with the United States, was the only country that comprised more than 10% of the company’s net sales in 2017, 2016, and 2015.
Apple took another step toward first-ever ‘one trillion dollar company’ when its last reported share price soared over $170 – elevating its market capitalization close to whooping $900 billion.
But on the roadways of back-to-back hits, US multinational is facing some serious challenges in the world’s second largest economy as well as Apple’s second largest market in the world – China.
While Trump is pushing Apple to bring back manufacturing jobs back into the United States from China – the Chinese smartphone makers are already helping him to toss Apple out of country.
In 2017, although California-based tech co surged its net sales by 6% but Greater China remained the only operating segment where Apple’s revenue is scaled back by another 8% – to $44.8 billion this year.
The net sales decline in Greater China was 17% in 2016.
Overall, Apple telescoped net sales of 24% or 13.9 billion from the region in two years mainly due to lower sales in iPhone coupled with the effect of weakness in foreign currencies relative to the US dollar.
In 2015, Apple trumpeted fabulous growth in Greater China when its net sales mushroomed by impressive 84% – to $58.7 billion but once Trumped, it cuddled its growth first by 17% in 2016 and then 8% in 2017. As a result, the iPhone maker also lost $6.0 billion of operating income in two years.
Chinese domestic smartphone market players including Huawei, OPPO, vivo, and Xiaomi are posing a strong threat to the Apple growth in the country and in the region. Amid a series of stars and shines around the world, Apple has failed to shed the fifth place in China.
Though Apple snapped an increase of 7% in the third quarter of 2017after a streak of six straight declines but its sales is half of fourth largest Chinese Xiaomi and 39% of frontrunner Huawei, according to IDC.
Apple shipped just 8.8 million units against Xiaomi (15.7 million units), vivo (18.9 million units), OPPO (21.6 million units), and Huawei (22.3 million units) for the period. The company’s iPhone X price tag at $1,264 is further helping cheaper Chinese brands to slowly basin the American marque in China.
Niche market is Apple’s precedence. It aims to make only the best products that cost some money to target the premium end segment. Cupertino company captured nearly 80% of the global smartphone’s industry profits last year as compared to market leader, Samsung (14.6%), Huawei (1.6%), OPPO (1.5%), and Vivo (1.3%).
But China is almost 30% of global handsets market and the financial results released by the company also show a tap to its net sales – emphasizing that tech ogre is slumping in premium Chinese market as well.
Then there is a political backdrop of Tim Cook and Donald Trump which surfaced when Apple CEO criticized Trump’s travel ban on predominantly seven Muslim countries.
‘We have employees that secured a work visa, they brought family to the US, but happened to be outside the US when the executive order was issued and all of a sudden their families were affected.’
‘They couldn't get back in. That's a crisis. You can imagine the stress. "If we stand and say nothing it's as if we're agreeing, that we become a part of it. It's important to speak out.’