Apple on Thursday hit listeners with a surprise shift in policy during their quarterly earnings call, announcing it will no longer report iPhone, Mac and iPad unit sales numbers starting with the December period.
The company will continue to report revenue, sales growth, and guidance, but will no longer break out unit sales for three of its most important lineups. That means analysts will be unsure as to the exact units shipped.
The surprise announcement was announced during the quarterly conference call about the fourth quarter of 2018 as part of opening remarks delivered by CFO Luca Maestri.
“A unit of sale is less relevant today than it was in our past,” Maestri said. He then remarked that the number of units sold doesn’t necessarily represent the relative health of a product’s underlying business.
Maestri also noted that segment competitors do not provide unit sales.
“Our intention is to continue to give revenue guidance at the company level and gross margin in the other categories,” Apple CEO Tim Cook said. “Our guidance isn’t changing, it’s the actual report that is changing.”
