Apple has a sometimes confusing financial year. Their first quarter of their 2017 financial calendar ended on 31 December 2016, meaning that our Q4 2016 is Apple’s Q1 of the following year. It doesn’t make logical sense but from a reporting perspective it lets the company start each year with a bang. And bang they have, reporting a record Q1 2017. And when Apple sets a record, you have to know that there’s a lot of money involved.
‘A lot’ in this case being an all-time quarterly revenue record of $78.4 billion. That’s with a ‘b’ and it beats out year-on-year revenue of $75.9 billion. The iPhone accounted for the majority of their revenue for the period — 64% or around $54.4 billion of the company’s income. The iPad wasn’t much of a contributor towards the final total, with the Mac range (notebooks and the like) throwing more cash in Apple’s direction than their tablets managed. Even so, the numbers are not to be sniffed at. You could do a fair amount of snorting with that much cash, though.
Apple’s Tim Cook said “We’re thrilled to report that our holiday quarter results generated Apple’s highest quarterly revenue ever, and broke multiple records along the way. We sold more iPhones than ever before and set all-time revenue records for iPhone, Services, Mac and Apple Watch.”
“Revenue from Services grew strongly over last year, led by record customer activity on the App Store, and we are very excited about the products in our pipeline.”