Apple’s profits drop for the first time in a decade

Tech giant Apple has seen the first decline in its profits in a decade, revealing an 18% fall for the first quarter of 2013.

Yet despite the fall, the company still posted quarterly revenue of $43.6 billion and quarterly net profit of $9.5 billion. The same period last year saw revenue of $39.2 billion and net profit of $11.6 billion, indicating that the battle in the smartphone and tablet markets is taking its toll.

Sales of Apple’s iPhone have slowed as competition from the likes of Samsung has intensified. Between January and March Apple sold 37.4 million iPhone devices, compared with Samsung’s 65 million sales for its Galaxy range of smartphone devices.

However, it was still positive news for Tim Cook, Apple’s CEO who said, “We are pleased to report record March quarter revenue thanks to continued strong performance of iPhone and iPad.

“Our teams are hard at work on some amazing new hardware, software, and services and we are very excited about the products in our pipeline.”

Yet investors and market specialists are becoming more sceptical.”The market is tired of the same old thing at Apple,” said Lauren Balter, an analyst at Oracle Investment Research in an interview with the BBC.

“Investors are looking for innovation. The reality is that people are looking at other products now and they are looking at other cool features from competitors.”