Apple confirms iPhone sales slowdown as iPad and Mac sales fall

No Christmas rush as buyers get bored of iPads and Apple warns of imminent iPhone sales crash

Apple unveiled its results for the final quarter of 2015 - its 2016 fiscal first quarter - and warned that iPhone sales will decline in the current quarter.

However, the company still managed to achieve what CEO Tim Cook described as "Apple's biggest quarter ever". Revenue in the quarter weighed in at $75.9bn, up from revenues of $74.6bn achieved in the same quarter a year earlier. Net income was also up marginally, from $18bn to $18.4bn.

At the same time, though, Cook also unveiled figures indicating that iPhone sales growth had flattened out and would drop in the current quarter. Unit sales of iPhone devices were up by just one per cent in the last quarter, but although Cook warned that they would fall, he suggested that drops of as much as 20 per cent that have been reported were wide of the mark.

"We do think iPhone units will decline in the quarter," he said. "We don't think that they will decline to the levels you'll talk about. We aren't going to project beyond the upcoming quarter."

Apple forecast second-quarter revenue of between $50bn and $53bn for the current quarter, significantly below analysts' average forecasts of $55.5bn. In the same quarter last year Apple reported revenue of $58bn.

Apple's guidance for the March quarter implies iPhone sales of 50 million to 52 million units in the March quarter, which would mark the company's first-ever decline in sales of the gadget, analyst Daniel Ives of FBR Capital Markets told Reuters.

The expected sales decline may be arrested by the rumoured release of an iPhone 5se device - a smartphone the size of the current iPhone 5s, which has been available at a big discount in some retailers, but with an upgraded microprocessor.

Yet, the sharp decline in sales of iPads continues unabated, with sales down a hefty 21 percent from $8.9bn to $7bn - from 21.4 million units to 16.1 million, despite the launch of the 12.9-inch iPad Pro. Meanwhile, sales of the Mac computer line also declined by three per cent to $6.74bn, down from 5.5 million units to 5.3 million.

Cook hinted that Apple plans to do more in cloud - "We wouldn't be breaking this out if it wasn't an area that was very important to us in the future", he said - while at the same time expressing interest in virtual/augmented reality, an area where rivals Google, Facebook and even Samsung have already forged ahead.

Late last year, Computing suggested in an opinion article that both Apple and Amazon might struggle to continue their fast growth this year.