Paul Briden 05/05/2017 - 2:06pm

Apple saw a growth in revenue during Q1 2017, but it wasn't from iPhone sales, which have declined

Apple's financial results are in, and they're both bad and good depending on how you look at it.

Year-on-year iPhone and iPad sales are down, but Mac and services sales have actually increased. Total revenue for the March quarter is $52.9billion, meaning Apple is seeing a return to growth for the second quarter running, to the tune of an $11billion profit.

Drilling down into those figures a bit, the iPhone sales portion is 50.8 million units down from 51.2 million in Q2 2016. Improved Mac sales, however, have gone up to 4.2 million units an increase of 4%. Meanwhile the iPad shifted only 8.9 million units, down 9% from the 10.25 million units from the same period in 2016.

Some analysts believe Apple's declining iPhone sales may have more to do with consumers waiting for the much-rumoured 10th anniversary iPhone 8. However, Tim Cook remained positive about iPhone Plus sales, saying that the larger model was still in high demand.

"We are proud to report a strong March quarter, with revenue growth accelerating from the December quarter and continued robust demand for iPhone 7 Plus," he said.

Apple's business has been widely reported to be growing in China in recent years, however, revenues from the region dropped to $10.7 billion from the same time last year, where revenue was $12.5 billion. Other product revenue climbed 31% suggesting Apple's wider ecosystem of hardware and services is quite popular in China.

Apple is projecting revenues for the third quarter at $43.5bn-$45.5bn.

At the same time, IDC has published its wider report of performance in the mobile industry for the first three months of 2017.

Its figures show that Apple and Samsung both had flat sales performance year-on-year, but despite this both still occupy the top two positions in global rankings. Samsung has the number one spot, while Apple holds second place. But, while these two show some stangation, the wider industry is showing healthy growth, boosted primarily by the growth of the remaining top five firms, all of which are from China.

Third place in the global rankings went to Huawei, which showed growth from from 28.1 million smartphone sales in Q1 2016 to 34.2 million for the 2017 quarter. Oppo saw shipments increase by 29.8%, while vivo occupies fifth place with over 18 million shipments.

Global shipments went up by 4.3% in total, up to 347.4 million units.