Once again, Apple just made a whole lotta moolah.
The company was about to beat its expectations for its fourth quarter, chalking up an US$11.1 billion profit on US$51.5 billion in revenue. Apple cited the iPhone as its biggest moneymaker, reporting 48.05 million iPhones sold, up from 39.27 million in the same quarter a year ago. More specifically, the company made US$32.21 billion in revenue from iPhone sales alone.
Analysts polled by Fortune were expecting Apple to sell 48.7 million iPhones in the quarter. Analysts also expected Apple to earn $1.88 per share, up from $1.42 a share in the same quarter last year. As for revenue, analysts wanted Apple to make $50.8 billion, while Apple itself expected to pull in $49 billion to $51 billion. The company handily beat all of those expectations.
Unfortunately, only two days of iPhone 6s and 6s Plus sales were included in the fourth-quarter earnings report, meaning we won’t know how popular the handset is until after the holidays.
In the meantime, Macs continue to sell, surprising those who expect the desktop computer to fall by the wayside as smartphones saturate the world. Apple sold 5.7 million Macs in Q4, up from 5.5 million in Q4 2014.
The bad news is that iPad sales have continued to slide. In the fourth quarter, iPad sales declined 20 percent year-over-year and 10 percent from Q3 of this year. Apple sold 9.9 million iPads in Q4, down from 12.3 million in Q4 2014. Still, with the iPad Pro on the horizon, this could provided a much-needed boost.
As expected, Apple has yet to announce Apple Watch sales numbers, which remain a mystery regarding the wearable device.
Stay tuned for additional details as they become available.