Picking apart Apple's Q2 2016 numbers - Six Colors

Check the full post for some bigger-picture Apple perspectives; also see Notes of interest from Apple's Q2 2016 conference call (AppleInsider)

"So in other words, if you like profits and strong sales, Apple has that. They’re not not what they were last year—and that’s not a great sign for Wall Street. But don’t let someone tell you that Apple’s in trouble, or that it lost money, or that iPhone sales are cratering, because none of that is true. What is true is that after many years of growth, some of it staggeringly inflationary growth, Apple didn’t grow this quarter. If you’re an investor, that may be quite painful. If you’re a user of Apple’s products, it probably won’t affect you much at all.

One final little silver lining: If you pretend 2015 didn’t happen at all, this quarterly result looks entirely boring. During the call with analysts, Apple executives pointed out that the iPhone 6S upgrade cycle is actually a little bit better than the one for the iPhone 5S. The iPhone 6, however, was a spectacularly huge upgrade cycle. Perhaps Apple finally embracing a larger phone drove a massive amount of sales all at once? Regardless, if I delete 2015 from my spreadsheets and look at the numbers, nothing crashes to earth—it just shows the continued cooling off of the iPhone’s previously rapid growth."

Picking apart Apple's Q2 2016 numbers - Six Colors