Apple just had the biggest holiday quarter in its history

silversurfer · Jan 28, 2022

Neither a global pandemic nor a supply chain crunch can stop Apple, based on the company's Q1 2022 earnings report. Released today, the report showed Apple smashing many of its sales records once again, with $123.9 billion in overall revenue and $34.6 billion in profit.

A lot of that money was driven by the iPhone 13, as this was the first full quarter since that product line's launch. When we reviewed the iPhone 13 lineup, we wrote that it doesn't exactly reinvent the wheel with flashy new features, but it does give the people what they say they want: better cameras and more battery life.

Cameras and battery life seemed to resonate with buyers. iPhone revenue for the quarter was $71.63 billion, up 9 percent year-over-year. Also, Apple achieved a new record for smartphone market share in the critical China market: 23 percent. That made the company the top-selling smartphone brand in the country for the first time in years.

Apple's services businesses (like Apple Music, Apple TV+, and iCloud) have been a major focus of expansion in recent years, and that expansion continues to pay off. Services revenue was up 24 percent to $19.52 billion during Q1. Apple reports that it has 785 million paying subscribers in total across all the services it offers. That's 165 million more than last year.

Mac revenue grew 25 percent since last year to $10.85 billion. That growth is thanks mainly to consumer interest in the M1-driven models that offer notably better performance and power efficiency than previous Macs with Intel processors. On the other hand, the iPad slipped 14 percent compared to the same quarter last year.

The company's catch-all category that includes other products like wearables and accessories grew to $14.7 billion, mostly on Apple Watch and AirPods sales.

Apple just had the biggest holiday quarter in its history

The one exception was the iPad, which lost 14% revenue YOY.

arstechnica.com

CyberTech · Jan 28, 2022

Apple made more money than ever during the holiday season, and its growth during 2021 has helped the company add 150 million more active devices. During an earnings call with investors last night, Apple CEO Tim Cook revealed that Apple now has 1.8 billion active devices.

That’s up from the 1.65 billion Apple reported a year ago, and the 1.5 billion active devices in January 2020. While Cook didn’t delve deeper into the device details, Apple crossed the 1 billion active iPhones milestone a year ago, after selling its billionth iPhone in 2016 and then hitting 900 million active iPhone users in 2019. Apple counts a device as active as long as it has engaged with an Apple service within the past 90 days, so the 1.8 billion number covers a variety of Apple hardware.

Google revealed last year that there are now over 3 billion active Android devices that have access to the Google Play Store. The true number of Android-based devices, including ones that use alternative stores, is likely much higher than 3 billion. Microsoft revealed earlier this week that there are now 1.4 billion active Windows 10 and Windows 11 devices. Microsoft also counts its Xbox One and Xbox Series X / S as Windows 10 devices.

Apple had a record-breaking quarterly earnings for the company’s fiscal Q1, posting $123.9 billion in revenue and record profits of $34.6 billion. The iPhone had a big quarter thanks to holiday sales, and accounted for a staggering $71.63 billion in revenue alone.