Apple Posts Largest Quarterly Profit of Any Company in History

Apple has posted its Q1 earnings and, as expected, they’re big. But what wasn’t expected, was just how big. Their earnings over the past 3 months were the largest of any company ever. Apple made $18 Billion, largely thanks to an incredible 74.5 million iPhones sold.

That number is the one most people are talking about too – broken down, that meant during the last three months, Apple sold 30,000 iPhones every hour of every day. It seems that Tim Cook’s prediction of “the mother of all upgrades” was right too; more iPhones sold in the last quarter were sold to new customers and Android switchers than in any quarter before it. The iPhone as a business is potentially more profitable than the whole of Google and Microsoft combined.

Mac sales were also up, with 5.5 Million sold, but iPad sales were down slightly, from 26 million to 21.4 million sold. Those iPad numbers are worth mentioning, as they were one of the few figures that Apple announced yesterday that weren’t on an unstoppable climb, leading many to speculate why. While some are going so far to suggest that tablets were a mistake, others are simply citing it to the gap between upgrades being greater for tablet owners than for smartphone owners. It’s suggested that customers are more likely to upgrade a tablet less often than they would for a phone, potentially explaining the decrease in sales. Others have suggested that the rise in ‘phablets’ is to blame – with Apple’s own iPhone 6 Plus cannibalising the success of the iPad.

Whatever it is, we don’t think Apple is all that bothered after posting such earth-shattering earnings.

Source: Apple