As expected, Apple announced on Tuesday that growth in the sale of iPhones has slowed significantly.

Apple reported growth in sales of the company's flagship smartphone was the slowest year-over-year ever, ending a growth streak that began in 2007, when the original Apple iPhone was first introduced.

For the first quarter of Apple's fiscal 2016, a period that ended on Dec. 26 last month, Apple sold 74.8 million iPhones, according to the company's earnings statement reported by The New York Times. The sales in iPhones last quarter grew only one percent over the 74.5 million iPhones sold in the same time period the year prior.

In total, Apple reported 1.7 percent growth in revenue during the quarter, resulting in revenues of 75.9 billion, below the $76.6 billion forecasted on Wall Street. Net profit for the company grew to $18.4 billion, over the previous year's $18 billion net.

The disappointing figures came as no surprise to most -- reports of a major slow down in supply chain orders for the iPhone 6s, indicating weak sales, have persisted through the winter -- though Apple's own forecast for the current quarter ending in March was startlingly downbeat. The company projected its revenue for Q2 2016 would be between $50 and $53 billion, lower than pessimistic Wall Street predictions and down from $58 billion the same time last year.

The downturn comes in a year when the newest release from Apple was the iterative iPhone 6s and iPhone 6s Plus. According to Newsweek, the latest available figures from Apple show that the most valuable company in history, ever, draws about 63 percent of its entire revenue from iPhone sales.

This year, the company's "S" models failed to generate as much consumer excitement as the iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus did in 2014, as they were the first Apple smartphones to feature a display larger than the traditional iPhone's four-inch screen.

Apple CEO Tim Cook took time to play up Apple's other products and revenue streams in a statement that accompanied the company's quarterly report. "Our team delivered Apple's biggest quarter ever, thanks to the world's most innovative products and all-time record sales of iPhone, Apple Watch and Apple TV," said Cook. "The growth of our Services business accelerated during the quarter to produce record results, and our installed base recently crossed a major milestone of one billion active devices."

Despite Cook's upbeat take on the rest of Apple's business, the company may now be scrambling to boost iPhone sales with its most traditional consumer base. Rumors have the Cupertino-based company bringing back a 4-inch variant of the iPhone this year to generate new revenue from those customers who avoided upgrading to the larger iPhone 6 or iPhone 6s in the past two years.

The device, thought to be called the "Apple iPhone 5se," may be launched early in the year -- an unorthodox release date window for iPhones -- specifically, sometime in March or April 2016.

Though it is now official that the iPhone's historic momentum has finally stalled, and this development is significant both to investors and for the company's history, keep in mind a sense of proportion: Apple's "disappointing" earnings report still included the largest quarterly net profit for any company in history.