NEW YORK - Apple’s pricey strategy carries risk. Making its new iPhones more expensive helped boost the tech giant’s revenue 20 percent in the latest quarter. Now Tim Cook is applying the same formula to the company’s Macs, iPads and accessories. But a growth warning suggests even Apple fans may have sticker shock.

The $1 trillion company generates roughly 60 percent of its sales, and most of its profit, from the iPhone. While handset volume was flat in the latest quarter compared with the same period a year earlier, at 46.9 million, these yielded over $37 billion of revenue, thanks to a nearly 30 percent jump in the average sales price, to $793 per phone.

Apple’s customer loyalty, design, penchant for security, incremental improvements and customer privacy ensure that most people and companies replacing old iPhones have been willing to pay a higher price for a new one.

The company also continued to squeeze more dollars out of iPhone users. Services revenue shot up 17 percent to $10 billion as users bought more apps from Apple’s online store and storage, and used their phones for more payments. Perhaps $2 billion of this – the company doesn’t break out the figure – came from Alphabet's Google in return for Apple making it the default search engine on iPhones, according to a recent Goldman Sachs estimate.

That leaves Apple’s other gadgets. Demand for Macs and iPads is mature. Other items such as watches and earphones are growing faster, but in total these businesses account for only about a quarter of revenue. So Apple is replicating its iPhone strategy and raising prices on new models it rolled out this week in time for the holiday quarter.

It’s not clear this formula will work, though. Apple warned that revenue in the current quarter, its busiest of the year, would be between $89 billion and $93 billion. The midpoint would represent growth of only about 3 percent, which would be a big step down from the previous quarter’s 17 percent pace. Its shares tumbled nearly 5 percent in after-hours trading.

For Cook and company, further growth may depend more on developing new gadgets than changing price tags.

On Twitter https://twitter.com/rob_cyran

 

CONTEXT NEWS

- Apple on Nov. 1 reported revenue of $62.9 billion for the quarter ending Sept. 29. That is an increase of 20 percent from the same period last year. Earnings were $14.1 billion, or $2.91 per share, compared with $10.7 billion, or $2.07 per share, a year ago.

- The company sold 46.9 million iPhones in the latest quarter, compared with 46.7 million in the same period a year earlier.

- Apple said it expects revenue of between $89 billion and $93 billion in its current quarter. Analysts had expected revenue of $92.9 billion, according to Refinitiv.

- At an Apple event on Oct. 30, the company unveiled new products including a MacBook Air, iPad Pro, Mac mini, Apple Pencil 2, and Smart Keyboard, all at higher prices than existing versions of these items.

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(Editing by Tom Buerkle and Martin Langfield) ((robert.cyran@thomsonreuters.com; Reuters Messaging: robert.cyran.thomsonreuters.com@reuters.net))