Apple today announced earnings for its first fiscal quarter of 2014, revealing that it sold 51 million iPhones and 26 million iPads. According to those figures, the company’s iPhone sales were up 6.7 percent year-over-year while its iPad sales were up 13.5 percent year-over-year.
Last quarter, Apple sold 33.8 million iPhones and 14.1 million iPads, but the jump shouldn’t surprise anyone given the holiday season is included this time around. In Q1 2013, Apple sold fewer phones and fewer tablets than this past quarter: 47.8 million iPhones and 22.9 million iPads.
Q1 2014 industry estimates for iPhones ranged between 54.88 million and 56.20 million while estimates for iPads ranged between 24.82 million and 24.95 million. Apple thus easily beat estimates for iPads but failed to do the same for iPhones.
More specifically, Apple managed to beat both the institutional consensus and the independent one when it comes to its tablet, but the number for its hottest gadget was below both. This is slightly worrying given that the iPhone line is definitely more important than the iPad for the company.
The 💜 of EU tech
The latest rumblings from the EU tech scene, a story from our wise ol' founder Boris, and some questionable AI art. It's free, every week, in your inbox. Sign up now!
Then again, given that the iPhone 5s and iPhone 5c have already been out for a while, while the iPad Air and iPad mini with Retina arrived this past quarter, the results aren’t too surprising. It’s also much easier to purchase a new tablet for someone as a present than a phone, and given that a large chunk of sales were related to the holidays, the figures make sense.
Overall, Apple is still impressively selling more devices than the comparable quarter last year, despite increased competition from the likes of Google, Samsung, and Microsoft. As always, the company didn’t offer numbers for specific device types (iPhone 5s versus iPhone 5c or iPad Air versus iPad mini), so it’s impossible to see which ones are performing better or worse.
See also – iPad Air vs. iPad 4: What has Apple changed? and iPad mini with Retina vs. iPad mini: What has Apple changed?
Top Image Credit: Wang Zhao/Getty Images
Get the TNW newsletter
Get the most important tech news in your inbox each week.