Timothy Donald Cook - Apple, Inc.
Analyst · the information you'll hear during our discussion today will consist of forward-looking statements, including without limitation those regarding revenue, gross margin, operating expenses, other income and expense, taxes, and future business outlook. Actual results or trends could differ materially from our forecast. For more information, please refer to the risk factors discussed in Apple's Form 10-K for 2015, the forms 10-Q for the first three quarters of fiscal 2016, and the Form 8-K filed with the SEC today along with the associated press release. Apple assumes no obligation to update any forward-looking statements or information which speak as of their respective dates. I'd now like to turn the call over to Tim for introductory remarks
Yeah, it's a good question, Shannon. So to sort of back up from our results for the quarter, the 90-day clock, and look at the full year of 2016, we were down 17% compared to the fiscal year 2015 which was up 84% from the previous year. So if you look at 2014 to 2016, the revenue grew 52% and the CAGR was 23%, which is really a pretty good result. Also as you probably know, the fiscal year 2016 performance was hurt by the devaluation of the currency which affected it about 3%, so the underlying business performance was 14% down. And so, why was it down? There's lots of reasons, but the largest one in our view is that when you look at what happened in 2015 in China, we had a surge of upgraders that came into the market for the iPhone 6 or iPhone 6 Plus, and the upgrade rate increased relatively more in Greater China than elsewhere around the world. And so when that upgrade rate in fiscal year 2016 returned to a more normal upgrade rate, which would be akin to what we saw with the iPhone 5S as a point, it had further to fall. And so that's the main reason in our view that you see a difference. Now that spun or created another issue for us, because we didn't forecast that accurately. So in Q1 of last year, we put in too much channel inventory and had been resetting the channel inventory over the few quarters that came beyond it or came after it. And so those two issues, which really the main one is really the first one and the second one was a symptom of it, are in our views the main issue. Now looking forward, the response to the iPhone 7 and 7 Plus has been very positive. It's very hard to gauge demand, as you know, when you're selling everything you're making. And so we'll find out more through the quarter, but we're confident enough to give you guys guidance that we're returning to growth this quarter, which obviously feels very good for us. And from a longer-term point of view, out of the 90-day clocks and so forth, we are very bullish on China. We continue to see a middle class that is booming there. There might be some sort of a new normal in the economy, but a new normal there is still a good growth rate. And so with the number of middle class – people growing into the middle class and the LTE adoption rate being still fairly low, around 45%, 50% or so, then I think we continue to have a really good opportunity there, and so we continue to focus significantly in China.