The first three months of 2021 brought a flood of revenue for Apple, up 54% from last year. And profits, too. The company had a successful quarter all around, with double-digit growth in iPhone, Mac, iPad, wearables and services revenue.
A shining star in the results was iPhone revenue, which increased by a whopping 65%. But other product categories increased by even higher percentages.
Wall Street thinks Apple recently finished an amazing quarter. If the analysts are right, the company will reveal on Wednesday the results of a January-through-March period with significant revenue growth in all its products, both hardware and services.
Apple will announce the financial results of its winter quarter on April 28. So far, people forced to work and learn from home have been very good for the Mac-maker’s bottom line. We’ll soon see if that carried through to the beginning of 2021.
February 18, 2004: Steve Jobs sends an internal memo to Apple employees revealing that the company is, for the first time in years, totally debt-free.
“Today is a historic day of sorts for our company,” he writes. It marks a big turnaround from the bad old days of the 1990s, when Apple carried more than $1 billion in debt — and faced the danger of bankruptcy.
iPad shipments shot up 40% during the last quarter of 2020, according to a market research firm. And the whole tablet market increased dramatically.
This growth helped Apple hold onto its place as the world’s second largest computer maker.
COVID-19 both helped and hurt Apple earnings in the company’s most-recent financial quarter. CEO Tim Cook and CFO Luca Maestri discussed the nitty-gritty details of the results Thursday. They also shared what’s really going on with Apple as it tries to keep releasing best-selling products in the middle of a pandemic that’s upended the world economy and ordinary people’s lives.
Here are seven things we learned from Apple’s Q4 2020 earnings call.
Apple pulled in more revenue last quarter than in any previous July-through-September period, despite the COVID-19 pandemic. Growth came from sales of Mac and iPad, as well as revenue from services.
But iPhone revenue was down dramatically because of the delayed release of the iPhone 12 series. That hurt earnings significantly.
Apple spends less than its chief competitors on research and development, both in total dollars and as a percentage of its revenue.
Still, the company spends far more now than it did before Tim Cook ran the company.
Revenue from iPad sales dropped 10% during the first quarter of 2020. And shipments dropped 3%, according to a market-research firm. But analysts say that people working and studying from home during the pandemic could bring a burst of purchases this quarter.
While COVID-19 certainly overshadowed Apple’s most recent financial quarter, the company actually saw an annual increase in revenue, with the growth primarily coming from services and wearables.
Looking ahead, the company predicts that Mac and iPad sales will be strong. And CEO Tim Cook remains confidant about Apple’s future.
