Apple profits

Apple’s global App Store ecosystem facilitated an impressive $1.3 trillion in developer billings and sales throughout 2024, marking a milestone for the platform, the iPhone giant said Thursday.

“It’s incredible to see so many developers design great apps, build successful businesses and reach Apple users around the world,” said Apple CEO Tim Cook. “This report is a testament to the many ways developers are enriching people’s lives with app and game experiences, while creating opportunity and driving new innovations.”

Apple made more money in the last year than any other company in the world, according to the new Fortune 500 rankings. With annual profits of $57.5 billion, no other enterprise came particularly close, with the nearest rival earning about $8 billion less.

This goes a long way toward explaining why Apple remains the most valuable publicly-traded company in the world.

Apple took in $81.4 billion in revenue during its most recent financial quarter, up 36% from the same quarter of last year. And profits were up as well, with earning per share hitting $1.30.

Market analysts just can’t keep up with how well the iPhone-maker is doing. These results beat expectations handily.

Working and schooling from home has led to a rush of computer purchases, to Apple’s benefit. The Mac-maker is set to reveal the results of its most-recent financial quarter on Wednesday, and analysts predict quarterly revenue will break through the $100 billion mark for the first time.

Apple is the headline in two new studies. One seems alarming as it shows Apple’s share in the smartwatch market has declined by 14 percent.

But the second study shows Apple as the biggest money maker in the smartphone market by a long shot. Thanks to iPhone X, Apple held 62 percent of the market share in Q2. Its closest rival, Samsung, has suffered double-digit sales losses and is a distant second at 17 percent.

Apple spent a whopping $12.7 billion on research and development last year. And $51 billion since Tim Cook became CEO. But one analyst says that might not be enough.

The company actually spends less on R&D as a percentage of the money it takes in than many of its competitors. About half as much.

Augmented Reality (AR) is still an emerging technology, but Apple is poised to profit from it significantly. Or that’s the prediction of one analyst anyway.

And all the extra billions in revenue wouldn’t require the rumored Apple AR Glasses, though that would help.

The latest data from Display Search suggests that the iPad mini is cannibalizing iPad sales, and that Apple won’t sell as many larger iPads this year as it anticipated. Generally speaking, self-cannibalism is something Cupertino’s okay with… but they may not like the taste in their mouths nearly as much this time.

Apple’s iPhone penetration strategy is to not release a lot of conflicting models, but to drop the price on previous iPhone models every time the new one comes out.

Right now, for example, Apple sells the iPhone 5 starting at $199 on contract, the iPhone 4S starting at $99 on contract, and the iPhone 4 with a two-year contract. In this way, Apple can sell an iPhone to anyone, regardless of their income level.

This strategy might be leading to negative repercussions for Apple, though, at least according to a new report, which suggests that Apple is proportionally selling considerably fewer iPhone 5 units during launch than they sold iPhone 4S and iPhone 4 units during their launch window.

Earlier in this day, we reported on a New York Times piece in which the paper claimed that Apple was using a variety of measure to avoid paying U.S. income tax. It turns out that the Times based key pieces of its information on a study that had been discredited two weeks prior.

The data used by the Times included a report by the Greenlining Institute, which made errors in computing Apple’s supposed tax rate at 9.8% for the 2011. The data used by the report effectively compared Apple’s 2011 profit with taxes paid by the company for profits in 2010 and drew unfounded conclusions as a result.