Apple announces their third quarter financial results, via converence call, today at 2p PT, 5p ET. You can listen live on Apple’s official earnings call page.
For your reading pleasure:
- Dan Frommer for Recode: Today Apple will reveal its confidence in this year’s iPhone launch timing
And:
- Mike Murphy for Quartz: The most important numbers in Apple’s earnings this quarter won’t be iPhone sales
Key is Apple’s forecast for the fourth quarter. From Dan Frommer’s post:
It’s the mid-year trough of the current iPhone cycle, so expectations are modest. Wall Street expects Apple to report $44.9 billion of June quarter revenue, representing 6 percent year over year growth. That’s somewhere around 40-41 million iPhone shipments for the quarter, with some analysts — notably, Above Avalon’s Neil Cybart, at 38.8 million — expecting fewer.
But the real question is how Apple will forecast its fiscal fourth quarter, which ends in September — and carries some clues for this year’s iPhone launch timing.
Most years, the new iPhone launches in late September, with a nice, big launch weekend or two of shipments to end the quarter. This year, however, there’s buzz that the anticipated super-high-end flagship iPhone might not launch until October or later, and could ship in limited quantities.
Some big fourth quarter clues coming today.