iPhone sales down for third consecutive quarter

There’s good and bad news for Apple as it released the company’s fourth-quarter earnings report today. The good news is, they hit one billion iPhones sold earlier this year, while the bad news is that this latest earnings report continues the downward sales trend for Apple’s iPhone.

This is the third consecutive quarter during which iPhone sales have dropped year over year, which doesn’t indicate any reason for the company to panic, after all, the report indicates the tech giant made a quarterly net income of $9 billion. It just means that people are buying less iPhones, 45.51 million were sold in 2016, 5% less than the 48 million iPhones it sold during the same time in 2015.

There could be several harmless reasons for this: The iPhone 7 took a bit of a kicking for ditching its headphone jack, and many reviews criticised the price and battery life. So, perhaps this is just an off year, but it’s something to consider, particularly if you’re engaged in a long development cycle for an iOS game.

There are also a drop in sales numbers for iPads (7 per cent) and Mac computers (16 per cent) compared to this time last year, meaning that while Apple isn’t exactly worrying now, they’re looking at sales declines across the board.