Apple's price improvement strategy is paying off

Despite a zero percent change in iPhone unit sales compared with the previous year, Apple closed its fourth fiscal quarter with a 29% increase in its business turnover in its division of smartphones. It also achieved its overall revenue target of $ 62.9 billion, up from $ 52.5 billion this quarter last year. Sales and profits exceeded Wall Street's expectations for the quarter.

Apple's Q4 quarter ended in September, which means it's just the first few weeks of new iPhone XS and XS Max releases. (The iPhone XR, also announced in September, was not available until October.) Despite the slow growth in sales, the average selling price per iPhone is now 793 dollars, against 724 dollars in the third quarter.

The increase suggests that Apple's pricing strategy seems to be working; The company, endowed with a trillion dollars, presented its first smartphone to cross the starting price of one thousand dollars in 2017 with the 10th anniversary of the iPhone, and continued the trend of more expensive phones this year with the iPhone XR at $ 749, the iPhone XS at $ 999 and the iPhone XS Max at $ 1,099. (He also dropped his cheapest iPhone SE at $ 399 after the announcement.)

Image: Apple

Apple has also announced new iPad and MacBook devices at an event held this week. The starting price of the updated MacBook Air is now $ 1,199, compared to $ 999, and the Mac mini at $ 799 instead of $ 499. Accessories are also seeing a price increase: the new Apple Pencil 2 costs 129 USD, against 99 USD before, and the new keyboard Smart Keyboard 179 USD, the price of the most expensive version of the previous model of the folio. The most expensive Apple products arrive at the moment when the Cupertino company told the US Trade Representative last month that tariffs offered by the Trump administration would further increase prices for Apple products, including the Apple Watch, AirPods and chargers.

Apple's Services division, which includes AppleCare, iCloud and Apple Music, posted record sales of $ 10 billion. (It should be noted that the repair costs of Apple products also seem to increase in parallel, the new iPad Pro costing up to $ 649 to repair without AppleCare +.) IPad sales were down by compared to the previous quarter, while Mac sales recorded a 42% increase in unity after the announcement of a new MacBook Pro in July

With many new Apple hardware announced this week and the highest price ever expected, Apple is naturally anticipating a strong holiday quarter, with expected first-quarter sales of $ 89 billion to $ 93 billion, up from $ 88.3 billion last year. However, it will be more difficult to calculate the average selling prices of iPhones, Macs and iPads. At the results conference, Apple's chief financial officer, Luca Maestri, announced that the company would no longer disclose sales of its units as of the next quarter.