During Apple's Financial Conference Call for Q1 2018 CEO Tim Cook delivered his usual introductory commentary about the company's financial quarter that provides shareholders, analysts and news groups with some added color and focus about the performance of the company's products and services. Our report is a transcript covering his full statement.

And one more thing: With many tech sites including Bloomberg making a point of iPhone sales being down 1% year-over-year, it has to be said that it's not entirely accurate. Apple's first quarter of 2018 had 13 weeks whereas the first quarter of 2017 had 14 weeks. If there was the same span of time for this quarter, Apple would have easily been in growth territory.

And considering that smartphone shipments were down in China by 14%, Apple bucked that trend which should be applauded and not seen as a miss for the quarter. Cook noted that looking at China on a weekly basis, Apple actually grew iPhone business 19% and that the top five smartphone models sold in China were all iPhones.

Tim Cook's Opening Statement

"Before we dive into the quarter I'd like to take a moment to talk about a significant milestone we recently crossed. Apple's active installed base reached 1.3 Billion devices in January and is at an all-time high for all of our major products. 1.3 Billion devices represents an astonishing 30% growth in just two years. It speaks to the strength and reliability of our products and our ecosystem as well as the loyalty, satisfaction and engagement of our customers. It's also fueling tremendous growth in our services business which I'll talk about a little later in the call.

Turning to the December quarter, we're thrilled to report Apple's biggest quarter ever, which set new all-time records in both revenue and earnings. We generated revenue of $88.3 billion which is above the high end of our guidance range and it is up almost $10 billion or 13% over the previous all-time record we set a year ago. It's also our fifth consecutive quarter of accelerating revenue growth with double digit grown in each of our geographic segments around the world.

What makes this even more remarkable is that the quarter that we're reporting today was 13 weeks long while the year ago quarter was 14 weeks. When we look at the average revenue per week in the December quarter this year compared to last year our growth was a stunning 21%."

On iPhone

"Our growth was broad based and a key driver was iPhone which generated it's highest revenue ever. iPhone X was the best selling smartphone in the world in the December quarter according to Canalys and it has been our best selling phone every week since it launched.

iPhone 8 and iPhone 8-Plus rounded out the top three iPhones in the quarter. In fact, revenue for our newly launched iPhones was the highest of any line-up in our history driving total Apple revenue above our guidance range.

I want to take a moment to recognize the tremendous amount of work that went into creating iPhone X. Our teams carried out an extremely complex launch from both an engineering and operations perspective, executing an outstanding product round that required years of research and development. One that introduced innovative features like an edge-to-edge super retina display and the TrueDepth camera which enables Face ID.

Our customers love these new features and gestures like simply swiping up from the bottom which make using iPhone even more intuitive and enjoyable.

Our team has put the technology of tomorrow in our customer's hands today, setting a standard for the next decade of smartphones, and we're very proud of their achievements."

On Services

"It was another very strong quarter for services with revenue of $8.5 billion up 18% over last year and we're on pace to achieve our goal of doubling our 2016 services revenue by 2020. The number of paid subscriptions across our services offerings passed 240 million by the end of the December quarter. That's an increase of 30 million in the last 90 days alone which is the largest quarterly growth ever.

We had an all-time record quarter for the App Store the best holiday season ever. We're seeing great excitement around augmented reality, with customers now enjoying over 2,000 ARKit enabled apps spanning every category in the App Store. In December when Pokemon go released its new augmented reality features built with ARKit, it jumped to the top of the App Store charts.

Last week on a stop in Toronto I met developers who are hard at work on creative applications using ARKit from art appreciation to ecommerce and I was very impressed with what I saw. Just four months after ARKit launched to the public, we've already released ARKit 1.5 in Beta to developers around the world and the response has been tremendous.

Augmented Reality is going to revolutionize many of the experiences we have with mobile devices and with ARKit we're giving developers the most advanced tools in the market to create apps for the most advanced operating system running on the most advanced hardware. This is something only Apple can do.

In Addition to the App Store, several other services had their biggest quarter ever including Apple music, iCloud and Apple Pay all of which saw growth in both active users and revenue."

On Apple Pay

"Apple Pay has reached an important milestone in the U.S.. As a result 50% year-over-year growth in merchant adoption it's now accepted at more than half of all American retail locations which includes more than two-thirds of the country's top 100 retailers.

Now available in 20 markets, global Apple Pay purchase volume more than tripled year-over-year and we're delighted to be expanding to Brazil in the coming months.

Today, you can use Apple Pay to take the subway in Guangzhou China, see a concert London's Wembley Stadium or buy a souvenir at Yosemite National Park. In the U.S. we launched Apple Pay Cash in December and it's off to a terrific start. Millions of people are already using it to send and receive money with friends and family quickly, easily and securely, to split a bill, to pay someone back or send a last minute gift right from the messages app."

On Apple Watch

"It was our best quarter ever for the Apple Watch with over 50% growth in revenue and units for the fourth quarter in a row and strong double digit growth in every geographic segment.

Sales of Apple Watch series 3 models were also more than twice the volume of series 2 a year ago. Apple Watch is the most popular smartwatch in the world and gained market share during the quarter based on the latest estimates from IDC."

On iPad

"It was the third consecutive quarter of growth for iPad revenue thanks to the strength of both iPad and iPad Pro. Based on the latest data from IDC we gained share in nearly every market we track with strong out-perfomance in emerging markets.

Worldwide, almost half of our iPad sales were to first time tablet buyers or those switching to Apple and that's true in some of our most developed markets including Japan and France. In China, new and switching users made up over 70% of all iPad sales."

On Mac

"For Mac, we launched the all new iMac Pro in mid-December, it's an entirely new product line designed for our pro users who love the all-in-one design of iMac and require workstation class performance. It's the fastest most powerful Mac ever delivering incredible computational power for simulation and realtime 3D rendering, immersive VR and complex photography audio and video projects.

Worldwide 60% of our Mac sales were to first time buyers and switchers and in China, that number was almost 90%."

On HomePod

We're looking forward to getting HomePod in customer hands beginning next week. HomePod is an innovative wireless speaker which delivers stunning audio quality wherever it's placed in the home thanks to the advanced Apple engineered hardware and software. Together with Apple Music, HomePod gives you instant access to one of the world's largest music catalogs. And with the intelligence of Siri, it's a power assistance that you can control through natural voice interaction.

We're very happy with the response from reviewers who experienced HomePod in advance of its launch and we think our customers are going to love this new product."

On Everyone can Code

We believe one of the key issues of the twenty-first century is education and because of that we've strenghten our commitment investment into initiatives like everyone can code. To find the innovators of the future we need to nurture the students of today.

Our app development with Swift curriculum which is available free on iBooks has been downloaded more than 1.2 million times worldwide with almost half of those coming from here in the United States.

It's also being taught in dozens of community colleges across the country putting practical skills in the hands of today's job seekers.

I was in London two weeks ago as we announced that the program was expanding to more than 70 colleges and universities in Europe. Millions of students around the world will have the opportunity to add Swift to their coding vocabulary and gain skills that are essential for today's economy.

This is an exciting time at Apple – and with the best lineup of products and services we've ever had and a set of initiatives that show how business can be a force for good in the world we can not be more excited about our future."

Yesterday Patently Apple posted a report titled "Apple Smashes Guidance with iPhone X being the Top Selling iPhone Every Week Since Shipping," which covered their financial results and guidance for Q2.

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