Apple selling eight iPhones a second — but far fewer iPads than expected and no news on Apple Watch

China is now the company’s second biggest market, Apple says in earnings release

Apple CEO Tim Cook points at an Apple Watch at an Apple Store on April 10, 2015 in Palo Alto, California. The pre-orders of the highly-anticipated wearable from the tech giant begin today as the watches arrive at stores for customers to preview. (Getty Images)

Apple sold 61 million iPhones per quarter in the first three months of the year, it has said, but fewer people than hopes are buying iPads and revenues from the tablets are now being outshone by Mac computers.

The numbers make it the most successful first three months that Apple has ever had, raising $58 billion. As such, the company will be paying out $200 billion of cash to shareholders.

The company also said that China is now its second-biggest market, behind America, taking over from Europe.

While it laid out clear figures for its Mac, iPad and iPhone sales, the company has not yet said how many Apple Watches it has sold. It is expected to continue that way, with Apple reporting the Apple Watch figures mixed in with other numbers.

But Tim Cook did say that the company was working hard to correct the shortage of Apple Watches that means orders placed today are not expected to be delivered until June, for most models. “Right now, demand is greater than supply, and so we’re working hard to remedy that,” Cook said in the call that followed the earnings release.

He said that response to the watch was “close to 100 per cent positive”, but that since it was a new product, “you wind up taking some time to fully ramp”. He also suggested that estimates of how much the Apple Watch costs to make are wrong, saying that the margins made on the Watch will be lower than the average, which is about 40 per cent.