Better iPhone sales take Apple Q3 revenue to over $45bn (Lead)

San Francisco Aug 2 (IANS) Better than expected iPhone sales led to Apple posting a quarterly revenue of $45.4 billion -- up seven per cent YoY (year-over-year) -- for the third quarter of 2017.

These results compare to revenue of $42.4 billion and earnings per diluted share of $1.42 in the year-ago second quarter the company said in a statement late on Tuesday.

"With revenue up seven per cent YoY we re happy to report our third consecutive quarter of accelerating growth and an all-time quarterly record for Services revenue " said Tim Cook Apple s CEO.

The net income was up to $8.72 billion ($1.67 per share) from $7.80 billion ($1.42 per share) a year earlier.

"We hosted an incredibly successful Worldwide Developers Conference in June and we re very excited about the advances in iOS macOS watchOS and tvOS coming this fall " Cook added.

iPhone sales were up 1.6 per cent to 41.03 million in the third quarter that ended on July 1.

The Cupertino-based tech giant sold 40.4 million iPhones a year earlier.

"We reported unit and revenue growth in all our product categories in the June quarter driving 17 per cent growth in earnings per share " said Luca Maestri Apple s CFO.

Apple saw 21.6 per cent jump in the services business - the App Store Apple Pay and iCloud - to $7.27 billion.

"We also returned $11.7 billion to investors during the quarter bringing cumulative capital returns under our program to almost $223 billion " Maestri added.

According to The Verge leading the way was Apple s iPad sales which were up 15 per cent from 2016.

Hardware like the Apple Watch AirPods and Beats headphones where the highlights in the Other Products category.

"China -- the region driving Apple growth for the past few years -- saw revenue drop from last year as competition from local phone makers increased " the report said.

--IANS
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