Apple released its first quarter earnings on Thursday exceeding Wall Street’s expectations, seeing its revenue skyrocket 16% from the same time last year.
“Apple is proud to report a remarkable, record-breaking quarter, with revenue of $143.8 billion,” Tim Cook, the company’s CEO, said in a statement. “iPhone had its best-ever quarter driven by unprecedented demand, with all-time records across every geographic segment.”
The tech titan’s reported revenue went far beyond analyst’s forecasts of $138.4bn. Apple’s earnings per share, $2.84, also surpassed Wall Street’s estimate of $2.68 per share. Last year, during the company’s first quarter, it reported $124.3bn, typically Apple’s biggest of the year after holiday shopping.
iPhone revenue shot up 23% since the same period last year. The company pointed to strong sales of its new line-up of the iPhone 17, which debuted in September. The slate of new smartphones, in particular the iPhone 17 and 17 Pro, has reinvigorated demand for Apple’s products, especially in China, where sales had been lagging behind projections.
This quarter the company drove strong results in China with sales in the region climbing 38%. Cook told CNBC that this was largely due to iPhone sales.
It is widely rumored that Apple is planning to debut its first folding phone sometime in 2026, which would bring it in line with Samsung, Motorola, Google and other companies, which have offered folding smartphones for years.
Over the past year, all eyes have been on Apple’s roadmap for integrating artificial intelligence into its products. The company has shown steady financial growth as iPhone sales have remained strong, but investors have worried that Apple is getting left behind its competitors when it comes to AI.
The company announced earlier this month that the rebooted version of its voice assistant, Siri, will be powered by Google’s Gemini AI models.
“Despite market participants continually punishing Apple stock for the company’s perceived lagging suite of AI offerings, the unseen iPhone 17 demand shows that the actual consumer market is prioritizing execution, pricing discipline, and ecosystem reliability over headline, often incremental AI features,” said Thomas Monteiro, a senior analyst at Investing.com.
Last quarter, Apple reported a new record for fourth quarter revenue, coming in at $102.5bn. The news came just days after the company hit a $4tn market value for the first time. Apple’s stock kept rising to hit an all-time high in early December. It’s fallen 10% since then, but is still up year-over-year. In extended trading on Thursday, Apple’s stock rose 3%.
