Did the iPad Save Apple? No.

By Douglas A. McIntyre Published Aug 2, 6:40AM EDT

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Did the iPad Save Apple? No. — © ipopba / Getty Images

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Apple Inc. (NASDAQ: AAPL | AAPL Price Prediction) posted mediocre results for its latest quarter.
The iPad made only a very modest contribution to that showing.
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Headlines claimed that the mediocre results from Apple Inc. (NASDAQ: AAPL) were only possible due to iPad sales. The iPad received a major upgrade in May. The announcement then said it would come in two sizes. It also received a more powerful processor called the M2.

Apple’s earnings show that the iPad made a very modest contribution. Apple’s overall revenue rose from $81.797 billion to $85.777 billion, an increase of $3.98 billion from the quarter a year ago. iPad sales were only a modest part of the jump. They rose from $5.791 billion to $7.162 billion, up $1.371 billion. That was hardly a home run.

The other contributor to the increase was Services. Services were supposed to eventually replace the iPhone as the top-line driver. That didn’t happen, and growth has slowed. Services revenue rose from $21.123 billion to $24.213 billion in the quarter a year ago, an increase of $3.19 billion.

The important news was that Apple broke out of several quarters of declining revenue, but not by much. The stock barely moved after the announcement, and that movement was down. Even a bit of excitement regarding Apple’s AI software launch did not create much enthusiasm.

Investors will have to wait until the next quarterly announcement to see how iPhone 16 sales do without the new AI operating system installed. Will people wait until that OS is available and delay purchases?

iPad sales didn’t help much because people were waiting for more significant news. That is 89 days away.

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About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.