The last 24 hours have been flooded with stock market news, from the normal to the nutty. But based on Apple's performance in recent quarters, the earnings the Cupertino company reported today for its first quarter of 2021 were very much on the normal side. And by that, we mean big numbers yet again.
According to the report, Apple crossed the threshold for $100 billion in revenue in a single quarter for the first time, and the company posted double-digit sales increases for every single one of its defined product categories. Overall, sales were up 21 percent year over year, despite many consumers' struggles in the pandemic-stricken economy.iPhone revenue was $65.6 billion, surpassing analysts' expected $59.8 billion and beating the same quarter last year by 17 percent. This coincides with the introduction of the iPhone 12 lineup (iPhone 12, iPhone 12 mini, iPhone 12 Pro, and iPhone 12 Pro Max), which was the most substantial redesign and upgrade to iPhones since the iPhone X three years earlier.
While the iPhone is Apple's big-ticket item, that product's growth was actually modest compared to a couple of others. The iPad's sales were up 41 percent year over year, reaching $8.44 billion. This was likely driven in part by the launch of the redesigned iPad Air.
And services—that business segment that Apple executives and investors are always looking to as the obvious growing revenue source—were up 24 percent year over year. This quarter included the launch of Apple Fitness+, but otherwise, this growth appears to have been driven by existing services like Apple Music, Apple TV+, or Apple Arcade.
Not all of them grew in equal measure, though: an Apple spokesperson said on the investor call that AppleCare has grown slower than other services because of its dependence on retail stores to provide its full value to Apple's customers.
In any case, total services revenue for the quarter was $15.76 billion.
The Mac also rose—21 percent in this case, up to $8.68 billion. (This quarter included the launch of the M1 Macs.) And a catch-all for all other products, of which wearables like the Apple Watch and AirPods make up a significant part, grew 29 percent year over year to $12.97 billion.
CEO Tim Cook told investors on the call that the total install base for iPhones has risen to 1 billion, up from the 900 million he stated last time that metric was reported. Total active install base for all Apple products was 1.65 billion—so yes, the iPhone is still Apple's dominant product and the one that forms the foundation for many of the services and wearables the company has introduced over the past few years.These positive numbers follow a two-year rally that itself followed some investor skepticism about declining iPhone sales.
Apple again declined to provide guidance to investors for the next quarter. The company hasn't given guidance on upcoming quarters since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic just under a year ago.
reader comments
106