Apple sold 47.5M iPhones in Q3, topping last year’s sales by 35%

Apple’s iPhone game remains strong.

Today the company revealed that it sold 47.53 million iPhones and 10.93 million iPads last quarter — missing the expectations of investors and finance wizards alike. Compared to last year’s Q3, iPhone sales and iPad sales grew and shrunk 35 percent and 17 percent respectively.

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On average, analysts expected Apple to sell about 50 million devices during its third fiscal quarter for 2015, with more cautious estimates resting around the mid 40s. As far as device sales go, it’s not really fair to call this a miss.

Apple says it sold 4,796,000 Macs last quarter, up more than eight percent from last year’s stats.

Unlike Google, Apple has consistently surpassed investors’ earnings expectations for the past two years. Apple’s earnings and revenue track record is nearly flawless on paper, despite declining iPad sales. All of this success rests on the iPhone.

Here’s a closer look at how iPhone and iPad sales are actually going these days. Keep in mind that mobile device sales, like most tech gadgets, spike and dip seasonally.

Here’s another look at the same data, showing how massive iPhone sales really are for Apple.

As we wrote yesterday, some mobile industry insiders have asked if Apple should even bother updating the iPhone in September — the company could just coast, because why the heck not? That’s incredibly unlikely, but the idea’s funny enough to print.

Here’s the raw data from the chart above: