Apple’s winning streak is soon to end

By THE DATA TEAM

APPLE posted the largest quarterly earnings of any company, ever, yesterday. It made $18.4 billion in profit in the three months to December 26th 2015, beating the record it set a year earlier by a few hundred million dollars. But that’s in the past. The word on the street is all about how Apple will fare next quarter. Thanks to turmoil in emerging markets, chiefly in China, where it makes a quarter of its sales, quarterly revenue is expected to fall by about 11% year-on-year. That would mark the end of a remarkable run for Apple—51 quarters of consecutive year-on-year revenue growth—just as it nears completion on its $5 billion new HQ.