Apple is doing better than expected. The quarterly figures of the tech giant should show that it was not affected much by the persistent chip shortages.
Apple posted a third more revenue in the third quarter of its broken fiscal year than in the same period last year. The third quarter is usually the quietest for the tech giant. Never before has the company sold more than $81.4 billion worth of products and services in April, May and June. This prosperity was partly because the company did not suffer much from chip shortages.
Apple had estimated in advance that those deficits would lead to a loss of revenue of 3 to 4 billion dollars. That ended up being less than $3 billion. However, sales of iPad tablets and Mac computers could have grown even faster without these problems. Now that’s down to nearly 12 percent year-on-year growth for iPads and over 16 percent for Macs.
The iPhone remained by far the most lucrative component for Apple. Smartphone sales rose by half compared to the same period last year. In particular, the iPhone 12 Pro and Pro Max, the two most expensive devices that Apple sells, ran like a train, according to CEO Tim Cook. The ‘other products’ category, which includes Apple’s Apple Watch and AirPods, brought in $8.77 billion, more than the iPads and Macs. This is a 40 percent year-on-year growth.
The services business, which includes everything from subscriptions to Apple’s music and video streaming services to revenues from payment service Apple Pay and AppleCare’s additional guarantee, continued to grow strongly. After the iPhone, this is now by far the company’s second revenue engine.
However, that branch is also under fire in many countries where Apple is under investigation by regulators for possible abuse of power in the management of the App Store and keeping the so-called NFC chip in iPhones. In addition, apple Watches closed for non-Apple payment services. All told, Apple posted a profit of $21.7 billion. That is almost double from a year earlier.