iPad quarterly sales grow year-over-year for the first time since 2013, best non-holiday quarter in two years

Apple's most recent quarter of iPad sales is not only the first time that iPad sales have grown year-over-year since 2013, but its best non-holiday quarter for sales of the tablet for two years.

In Tuesday's quarterly earnings report, Apple declared that it had sold 11.42 million iPads on the quarter, generating $4.97 billion in revenue. In the last quarter, Apple noted 8.92 million units sold, with a revenue of $3.89 billion.

In the year-ago quarter, Apple's sales volume was significantly less than this quarter, with 9.95 million units sold. Revenue was close to this last quarter's, with $4.88 billion gleaned from the device, mostly on the strength of the new 12.9-inch iPad Pro.

On March 21, Apple released the entry-level fifth generation iPad. The new iPad is the size of the original iPad Air, and features the A9 processor with M9 motion co-processor, and starts at $329 for 32GB of storage. The third fiscal quarter is the first full quarter of availability of the device.

The 10.5-inch iPad Pro was revealed during the 2017 WWDC keynote, with the new mid-size offering in the line receiving a larger 120Hz refresh 10.5-inch display with thinner bezels, the A10X Fusion processor, while still weighing just one pound.

20 Comments

tallest skil 43086 comments · 14 Years

About 7 years ago

I still think that tablets are the future of portable computing; glad to see purchases increasing again. I wonder if the next set of iPads will have the same front-facing layout as the iPhone 7S/11th iPhone or if they'll inexplicably have the old design stick around for one more revision.

Soli 9981 comments · 9 Years

Will we see a resurgence of iPad sales going forward or is this just a blip from having just released new iPads?

wizard69 13358 comments · 21 Years

tallest skil said:

I still think that tablets are the future of portable computing; glad to see purchases increasing again. I wonder if the next set of iPads will have the same front-facing layout as the iPhone 7S/11th iPhone or if they'll inexplicably have the old design stick around for one more revision.

IPads are a tool that fills a specific niche. The surprising thing here is that the volume is larger than the entire Mac Market. People have claimed for a long time that the iPad was dying even though sales where very strong and simply level out after the noel nature of the device passed. Now people are seeing real value in iPad and thus sales are once again moving forward. It doesn't hurt either that performance now matches lowish end laptops.

What would really drive iPad sales is a full scripting environment for the basic apps. Once people can employ the same power user techniques with iPad that we see with other platforms the wider its acceptance will be. Being able to script Numbers and some of the other apps would drastically improve the platforms utility.

wizard69 said:

tallest skil said:

I still think that tablets are the future of portable computing; glad to see purchases increasing again. I wonder if the next set of iPads will have the same front-facing layout as the iPhone 7S/11th iPhone or if they'll inexplicably have the old design stick around for one more revision.

People have claimed for a long time that the iPad was dying even though sales where very strong and simply level out after the noel nature of the device passed.

And it grew faster than the iPhone, so one might also assume it will plateau faster, too.