• by Thom Forbes  @tforbes, August 2, 2017

Contrary to emerging conventional wisdom, there appears to be more to Apple’s future than whatever the high-end innovations and appealing gewgaws on the latest iPhone may be, whenever it may emerge. Revenue increased 7% year-over-year in its third quarter — a record pace — with legacy devices such as the iPad and the Mac doing very well, the company reported yesterday. Sixty-one percent of its sales were overseas.

“The biggest surprise was a revival of the iPad business, and the continued momentum of the Mac, which both had waned in recent years as consumers shifted more money into smartphones,” writes Tripp Mickle for the Wall Street Journal. “Mac sales rose 6.7%, the third consecutive quarter of gains, while iPads avoided a fourth consecutive quarterly slide with 1.9% growth. For the first time in 14 quarters, iPad shipments increased, rising 15% to 11.42 million units amid strong sales to schools and businesses.”

Not that the iPhone was a slacker — Apple “said it hit a milestone of 1.2 billion iPhones sold,” Reuters’ Anya George Tharakan and Stephen Nellis report. “The April-June quarter is traditionally a soft one for Apple as the market waits for the September launch of new iPhone models. But Tuesday’s results show that iPhone buyers may be less inclined than they once were to delay purchases until a new model is out.”

The company “said little about the upcoming phones and declined to address reports of production delays with a new high-end model, which is expected to feature an edge-to-edge screen and is expected to cost more than $1,000,” Vindu Goel writes in the New York Times.  

“Analysts thought that consumers would wait for the highly anticipated iPhone 8 before they upgraded. Apple is expected to make significant changes in its upcoming 10th anniversary edition — such as wireless charging and facial recognition software,” adds NPR’s Laura Sydell.

The Apple Pay register was also metaphorically ringing with the sale of all those supplemental apps and AAC files on iTunes, which are featured in the headline over the BBC’s coverage.

Apple CEO Tim Cook “stressed the success of its services unit, which includes Apple Pay, the App Store and Apple Music. The division had sales of nearly $7.3 billion during the three months to the end of June, a rise of 22% on the same period last year,” Dave Lee writes.

“Apple Pay now accounts for almost 90% of mobile payment transactions around the world, said chief financial officer Luca Maestri. Paying accounts on the App Store are also on the rise, he said,” Lee continues. “Geoff Blaber of CCS Insight described the services business as ‘the shining light.’”

During its earnings call with analysts, recorded here, Cook “addressed Apple’s decision over the weekend to remove dozens of unlicensed virtual private networking apps that allowed Chinese consumers to access the entire internet and evade government censors,” the NYT’s Goel writes.

“We would obviously rather not remove the apps, but like we do in other countries, we follow the law wherever we do business,” he said. “That doesn’t mean that we don’t state our point of view in the appropriate way.”

Apple also suffered a 10% revenue decline in China, as CNBC reports. 

“Part of the problem Apple has there is that there are local competitors that provide a very similar experience to the iPhone for a fraction of the cost. Perhaps we Western fanbois, who seem content to pay whatever inflated price Apple feels like charging us, could learn a thing or two from the Chinese consumer,” comments James Moore for the U.K.’s Independent.

“Of course, we won’t, and we haven’t. Which is why the rest of Apple’s results look so dreamy,” he observes. 

Also during the call, Cook “declined to directly address U.S. President Donald Trump's claims that Apple will build three new factories in the U.S., instead citing the company's job creation efforts and a $1 billion U.S. manufacturing fund,” according to the Reuters story. 

Kif Leswing, writing for Business Insider, put it a bit more bluntly: “Cook was asked point blank about what the President said about him, and the three ‘big, beautiful plants.’

“Cook dodged the direct question.”

But if the President said it, Boy Scouts’ honor, it must be true, no?