Apple posts $18 billion Q1 profit, largest in its history

The Apple tastes extra sweet today as the Cupertino based tech giant posted its first quarter results. As expected the numbers were good, really good. Led once again by record sales of new iPhones and holiday sales of iPads and Macs, Apple posted earnings of $18 billion on $74.6 billion in revenue, far above what it forecasted back in October, and marking the highest quarterly profit in its history. This news on the back of the report that Apple is gaining market share in China and South Korea must be music to Tim Cook’s ears…
If you break the record numbers down by product, Apple sold 74.5 million iPhones, 21.4 million iPads, and 5.52 million Macs. Those numbers were up big from the number of iPhones and Macs Apple sold during the same time last year, but down big for the iPad.

Apple CEO Tim Cook expressed his gratitude to the market – “We‘d like to thank our customers for an incredible quarter, which saw demand for Apple products soar to an all-time high. Our revenue grew 30 percent over last year to $74.6 billion, and the execution by our teams to achieve these results was simply phenomenal.”

These phenomenal results came in above even Apple’s most optimistic estimates. Apple forecasted its revenue somewhere between $63.5 billion and $66.5 billion. Wall Street was expecting about $67.50 billion according to 40 analysts polled by Yahoo Finance (see more here). Apple did not however release the exact numbers of iPhone model sales and will probably be a hot topic for analysts in future media conferences. The larger, more expensive iPhone 6 Plus carries a larger profit margin, though consumer polls have shown it wasn’t as popular as the smaller model in many regions, including the US.

apple-graph — Image credit – “The Verge”

The financial news coming from Apple is in stark contrast to that of its major competitors Samsung and Sony, but as we have seen time and time again it only takes one great product or innovative idea to turn the tide again. Let’s hope Apple doesn’t get complacent (many would argue that ship has sailed) and continue to improve on their product offerings.