It's long been true that sales of Apple mobile products follow cycles. This started with the iPod, which to this day still displays a spike in sales around the holidays, and has become quite visible with the iPhone, which shows spikes in sales around every product refresh. Freelance analyst Benedict Evans has published a post about the cyclicality of the unit sales figures for all of Apple's mobile products and notes that "the iPad is now starting to become just as cyclical as the iPhone."
As you can see from Evans' chart at the top of this post, and as Evans states in his article, "sales are being driven by both the calendar season and the age of the product." Yesterday's earning call pointed out that iPad sales were down, but
