The conventional wisdom that Apple has a problem in China may need some updating.
In its fiscal 2017 fourth quarter financial results published last week Apple once against beat analyst estimates, bring in $52.6 billion in revenue, a rise of $10.71 billion. In Q4 2016, the revenue was $9.01 billion.
Tim Cook, the CEO of Apple, said in the earnings release that the company is looking forward to a great holiday season, led by the strong sales of the iPhone X. In the fourth reported quarter, Apple sold 46.7 million iPhones, without specifying the breakdown between SKUs, at an average price of $618 each. This contributed $28.85 billion to the American technology and electronics firm.
Revenue in China spiked, growing from $8 million to $9.8 billion year-on-year.
The 12% year-over-year increase in revenue has been credited to Apple's channel strategy, which extends beyond the consumer space, entering corporate partnerships for the dual purposes of scale and establishing familiarity of its devices as essential tools in the engineering workspace. Apple has been working with leading business to business (B2B) companies to help them build out software and data analysis support offerings.
Last month, for example, Apple announced a partnership with General Electric (GE) that would help the conglomerate develop mobile apps for managing machinery, factories and power plants as the industrial giant steps up efforts to sell software and services.
Meanwhile, the gadgets and tech used by the next James Bond could very well be made by Apple; Apple revealed a billion dollar bid for the rights to the James Bond franchise.
The bigger picture is that the company has set aside over $1 billion to acquire and produce its own original content, placing itself in the running for the OTT space, thereby competing directly with Netflix, iFlix, and Amazon.