Apple sales increased by 5.7% in the holiday quarter year-over-year thanks to a host of new products, but the picture was much different in North America.
The company revealed in its first-quarter earnings report Monday that sales in the Americas actually declined slightly from $20.3 billion in the first quarter of 2013 to $20.1 billion in the most recent quarter. On the earnings call Monday night, Apple CEO Tim Cook confirmed that the company's "North America business" had "contracted somewhat year-over-year."
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Cook attributed the decline to two factors: carriers and the iPhone 5C.
"We actually sold more iPhone 5Ses than we projected. The mix was stronger to the 5S," he said, confirming reports in recent months that suggested far more consumers were flocking to the more expensive iPhone 5S over the cheaper 5C. "It took us some amount of time to build the mix that customers were demanding and as a result, we lost some sort of units for part of the quarter in North America."
When asked by an analyst later in the call why more people opted for the 5S than Apple had expected, Cook refrained from critiquing the 5C, and instead pointed to the 5S' new key feature.
"I think the 5S, people are really intrigued with Touch ID," Cook said, referring to the fingerprint scanner. "It's a major feature that has excited people. I think that associated with the other things that are unique to the 5S [and] got the 5S to have a significant amount more attention and a higher mix of sale."
"It was the first time we'd ever run that particular play before," he added, talking about the decision to launch two new models at the same time.
Cook also cited carriers changing their upgrade policies hurt North America iPhone sales. He was presumably referring to carriers who made it more expensive for customers to upgrade to new devices like the 5S and 5C before running out their full two-year contracts.
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