Apple posted fiscal Q4 earnings of $89.5 billion, down one percent year-over-year. CEO Tim Cook put the quarter’s best facts forward: “a September quarter revenue record for iPhone and an all-time revenue record in Services,” and quarterly earnings per diluted share of $1.46, up 13 percent. While net income of just below $23 billion exceeded Wall Street expectations, Q4 capped a fiscal year in which Apple revenue fell 2.8 percent, impacted by a decline in iPhone sales in China. Following the report, shares fell 3 percent in extended trading based on the prospect that the company may not rebound to growth in the important holiday sales season.

CNBC pointed out that in reporting its Q4 results, Apple “beat analyst expectations for sales and earnings per share but revealed that overall sales fell for the fourth quarter in a row.”

“We now have our strongest lineup of products ever heading into the holiday season, including the iPhone 15 lineup and our first carbon neutral Apple Watch models, a major milestone in our efforts to make all Apple products carbon neutral by 2030,” Cook said in an earnings release.

The Q4 sales decline was based in part on the fact that “the company’s business in China, its third largest market, shrank 2.5 percent to $15.1 billion,” according to The Wall Street Journal, adding that in China, “Apple is facing a broad economic slowdown, stronger domestic competition and heightened government scrutiny.”

For the three months ending September 30, China’s homegrown Huawei smartphone sales grew 37 percent in that market from a year earlier, “while Apple’s iPhone shrank 10 percent, according to Counterpoint Research,” WSJ says.

The Chinese government recently ordered its employees not to use iPhones “or other foreign-branded phones for work,” WSJ recently reports.

Apple said its iPhone business was up 2.8 percent to $43.8 billion, spot-on with analysts’ expectations for fiscal Q4. “That’s actually not a bad result given that the smartphone market that drives Apple’s business shrank 10.5 percent in the same 12-month period, according to IDC data,” writes The Information.

Looking ahead, “the tech giant released four new phones in the iPhone 15 family in September, including models that featured titanium cases and better cameras,” WSJ points out.

A major disappointment was iMac revenue underperforming by nearly a billion dollars: $7.61 billion versus $8.63 billion expected, CNBC points out. The Mac is “in a serious rough patch,” according to The Verge, though Apple’s recent announcement of iMacs featuring M3 chips could help.

In June, “Apple became the world’s first corporation to close with a market value above $3 trillion,” WSJ wrote at the time.