Wall Street analysts set an ambitious goal for Apple to beat by predicting the iPhone maker’s revenue had increased 4% during the critical holiday shopping season. No problem — Apple met or exceeded those expectations.
“Today Apple is reporting our best quarter ever, with revenue of $124.3 billion, up 4 percent from a year ago,” said Tim Cook, Apple’s CEO. “We were thrilled to bring customers our best-ever lineup of products and services during the holiday season.” Meanwhile, Apple Watch news has been making headlines, highlighting significant shifts in market trends.
Apple financial results for Q1 2025 set new revenue record
An average of Wall Street analysts’ predictions pegged Apple’s revenue in the last three months of 2024 to hit $124 billion, up 4% from the $119.6 billion the tech giant took in during the same quarter at the end of 2023, according to figures compiled by Yahoo Finance. And the average earning per share estimate came in at $2.34, up year-over-year from $2.18.
On Thursday, after the stock markets closed, the company’s actual results were… $124.3 billion in revenue and $2.40 in diluted earnings per share.
Chart: Ed Hardy/Cult of Mac
Mixed results by product category
Not that all of the news is good. The breakout of numbers from the December quarter shows that iPhone sales revenue declined 1% year over year. As the iPhone generates more than half of Apple’s revenue, any decline will surely look bad to investors.
Plus, sales in China dropped 12%. This was once seen as an important growth market for the tech titan — now not so much. It’s still the source of about 17% of Apple’s revenue last quarter.
On the other hand, revenue from Mac sales jumped 16% versus the same quarter of the previous year. Multiple new Macs hit store shelves in the December quarter, including the first MacBook Pro model with Apple’s M4 processor.
iPad revenue saw an annual increase of 15%, while Services revenue — money coming in from the App Store, Apple Music, etc. — increased 14%.
More details came during Apple’s earnings call with investors, during which CEO Tim Cook and new CFO Kevan Parekh took questions. Be sure to read our overview of mind-melting stats from this earnings call.
Apple in its own words
Apple’s full financial results announcement for Q1 2025 says:
Apple today announced financial results for its fiscal 2025 first quarter ended December 28, 2024. The Company posted quarterly revenue of $124.3 billion, up 4 percent year over year, and quarterly diluted earnings per share of $2.40, up 10 percent year over year.
“Today Apple is reporting our best quarter ever, with revenue of $124.3 billion, up 4 percent from a year ago,” said Tim Cook, Apple’s CEO. “We were thrilled to bring customers our best-ever lineup of products and services during the holiday season. Through the power of Apple silicon, we’re unlocking new possibilities for our users with Apple Intelligence, which makes apps and experiences even better and more personal. And we’re excited that Apple Intelligence will be available in even more languages this April.”“Our record revenue and strong operating margins drove EPS to a new all-time record with double-digit growth and allowed us to return over $30 billion to shareholders,” said Kevan Parekh, Apple’s CFO. “We are also pleased that our installed base of active devices has reached a new all-time high across all products and geographic segments.”Apple’s board of directors has declared a cash dividend of $0.25 per share of the Company’s common stock. The dividend is payable on February 13, 2025, to shareholders of record as of the close of business on February 10, 2025.
Ed Hardy has been writing full-time about tech for 25 years, and using it for much longer than that. His intro to Apple was a Macintosh Classic II (which he still has), but now he uses a 13-inch iPad Pro as his primary computer. He’s written for NotebookReview, TabletPCReview, and Brighthand, as well as other sites.
