Apple reports best ever quarter for Apple TV sales

The new Apple TV box

Apple reported its “best quarter by far” for Apple TV sales during its fiscal first quarter, as the company posted record quarterly profit of US$18.4 billion.

Speaking on the company’s earnings call, Apple CEO Tim Cook said that the number of apps developed for Apple TV was growing rapidly and that today there are “over 3,600 apps delivering everything from games to entertainment to educational programming.”

Though Apple did not break down sales figures for Apple TV, chief financial officer Luca Maestri said that the growing contribution from Apple Watch, as well as the successful launch of the new Apple TV, caused sales in Apple’s ‘other products’ category to grow 62% year-on-year to US$4.35 billion.

For the quarter ending December 26, Apple expanded the distribution of the Apple Watch to almost 12,000 locations in 48 countries, and said that, as expected, it set a new quarterly record for Apple Watch sales.

In the quarter Apple also sold a record 74.8 million iPhones, however sales were only up slightly from the 74.5 million units it sold in the same quarter a year earlier – marking the slowest growth ever for iPhone sales.

Speaking on the call, Cook also cautioned that Apple expects iPhone sales to decline in the current quarter – though not by the 15% to 20% predicted by some analysts.

Overall the company posted record quarterly revenue of US$75.9 billion and profit of US$18.4 billion, compared to revenue of US$74.6 billion and net income of US$18 billion in the same quarter a year earlier.