Apple revenue fell five per cent year-on-year to $58 billion in Q2 2019 as the company's services business failed to make up for the declines in hardware sales.

For the three months ending March 30th 2019, net income also fell to just under $11.6 billion, compared to $13.8 billion the year prior.

Apple noted that services revenue rose 16 per cent year-on-year to an all-time high of $11.5 billion for the quarter, from its hardware install base of 1.4 billion active devices.

In an earnings call, as transcribed by Seeking Alpha, Apple chief financial officer Luca Maestri said Apple saw double-digit revenue growth across the App Store, Apple Music, cloud services, AppleCare, Apply Pay and Search Ads.

Hardware decline

Apple CEO Tim Cook stated that iPhone revenue was down 17 per cent from a year ago, though said these declines were “significantly smaller in the final weeks of the March quarter”. He added that over the past five months, November and December were “the most challenging”. iPad meanwhile saw its strongest growth in six years.

“Our March quarter results show the continued strength of our installed base of over 1.4 billion active devices, as we set an all-time record for Services, and the strong momentum of our Wearables, Home and Accessories category, which set a new March quarter record,” said Cook.

“We delivered our strongest iPad growth in six years, and we are as excited as ever about our pipeline of innovative hardware, software and services.”

Apple has an array of services set to launch this year, including games subscription service Apple Arcade, which will launch with more than 100 games. Cook has said it will be a service "for players of all ages".