Company: Percent and Iphone

company: A 5 percent sales drop shows Tim Cook's company can no longer expect to sell significantly more phones or just to jack up prices, according to Global Times China. Rising margins on extras sold to iPhone users and the promise of 130 billion of capital returns buys Apple time to refresh. The 740 billion tech giant's holiday quarter was dismal, as expected. The iPhone has transformed Apple over the past dozen years, providing about 60 percent of the company's revenues, but the smartphone market has now matured. Revenue from the iPhone sales fell nearly 15 percent in the latest quarter, from a year earlier, even though the company charges prices almost 5 times as much as the average non-Apple smartphone, according to Sanford Bernstein. The number of units sold worldwide are expected to grow less than 3 percent this year, estimates research outfit IDC. Apple had resisted the slowing sales trend by raising prices to sustain profit growth, but that game appears to be over. (news.financializer.com). As reported in the news.