Apple will host its earnings call for the second quarter of its fiscal 2017 this afternoon at 5pm Eastern (10pm UK), and we'll be liveblogging the call and the analyst Q&A session to give you all the information, along with our insights and charts.
Apple's numbers were down year over year for most of 2016, the first time that has happened in recent memory. The drop was due in part to the outsized success of the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus, a success the iPhone 6S couldn't replicate. Apple returned to growth in Q1 of 2017, though as some commentators noticed, the quarter also had one more week in it than Q1 of 2016, giving Apple extra time to get those numbers up.
The company does expect modest growth to continue in Q2, however. It projected revenue between $51.5 billion and $53.5 billion, which even at the low end is an improvement over last year's $50.6 billion. Assuming Apple hits these numbers (and it consistently does), it will be more informative seeing where that growth comes from. Will the iPhone 7 continue to outperform the 6S despite relatively few external changes? Will the iPad's decline slow down or reverse? Will the new MacBook Pros continue to buoy an otherwise stale Mac lineup? And will revenue from Apple's services continue to grow at a steady clip, as it has for the last few quarters?
When it came to new product launches, it was a relatively quiet quarter, but we did get a handful of new things. The iPhone 7 got a new red finish and the iPhone SE's storage capacities were bumped, and the new $329 iPad is an excellent value (though we'll probably need to wait until next quarter to see its full effect on iPad sales, and any sales improvement may be offset by the aging iPad Pros at the high end).
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