APPLE Inc. posted its first quarterly decline in revenue in 13 years, ending a historically great run for the world’s most valuable company and stoking questions about whether its best days are behind it.
The slowdown reflects the challenge facing Tim Cook, who took over as chief executive from Steve Jobs in 2011 with the iPhone a success, the iPad booming and the Apple Watch in development.
Now, iPhone sales are slowing, along with the rest of the smartphone market, the iPad has slumped for more than two years, and the Apple Watch is in its early days.
The company has struggled to maintain the sales surge that followed the introduction of its larger-screen smartphones in late 2014. The 2015 successors to those models haven’t generated as much enthusiasm from consumers.
Apple’s revenue and profit for the fiscal second quarter ended March 26 both missed analysts’ expectations. The company also projected that revenue in the current quarter would fall far short of expectations.
But for all of the concerns about Apple’s growth, the company still generated profits in the March quarter that are expected to exceed the combined earnings of technology peers Alphabet Inc., Facebook Inc. and Amazon.com Inc.
In an interview with The Wall Street Journal, Mr. Cook said it was “a challenging quarter,” but he dismissed concerns that Apple was in decline. He attributed the slump to short-term factors such as the strong dollar, difficult economic conditions, and difficult comparisons for iPhone sales.
“It’s a tough bar to hurdle, but it doesn’t change the future. The future is very bright,” he said.
The iPhone was the main culprit in the revenue decline. After an unbroken eight-year run of growth since the device’s introduction in 2007, Apple reported the first-ever slide in iPhone sales. The company said it sold 51.19 million iPhones in the quarter, down from 61.17 million units a year earlier.
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