Apple iPhone sales falling "disappointing"

Apple's iPhone sales fell, which hurt the financial performance of the technology giant.

The company's sales figure fell 5% over last year to establish about 84.3 billion dollars (64.5 billion pounds sterling) over the last year. last quarter, while the iPhone business figure fell 15% to about $ 52 billion.

This was expected after the tech giant warned investors earlier this month that its revenue would be about $ 84 billion, which was lower than expected.

The company partly attributed the problems to a slowdown in China.

The executives said they remain confident that the growth of its service business, which includes Apple Pay and the App Store, will drive future performance.

Services sector revenues jumped 19% to a record $ 10.9 billion for the quarter ended December 31st.

"While it is disappointing to miss our revenue forecasts, we are managing Apple for the long term and this quarter's results show that the underlying strength of our business is deep and broad," said Tim Cook, general manager of Apple.

The price of Apple's stock has fallen by about a third since October, as investors fear that buyers' appetite for iPhones will weaken.

These fears intensified after the company announced that it would stop reporting the number of iPhone, iPad and Mac sold each quarter.

However, the company's shares rose nearly 4% in after-hours trading on Tuesday, as the company held up better than expected.

According to Apple, quarterly sales fell more than 25 percent in the Greater China region, which includes Hong Kong and Taiwan, compared with the previous year.

They also lost about 3% from one year to another in Europe.

But in the Americas – the largest region of society – sales have increased by almost 5%.

Apple's struggles are not unique.

Global smartphone shipments have declined 5% in 2018, according to Cbadys, a market badysis company.