Macs and iPads
Last quarter Apple did predict that Mac and iPad sales would increase as more users found themselves working and learning from home, and this appears to have been borne out in the numbers, which saw a big jump from the same time last year.
Mac sales revenue increased by almost 22% from the year-ago quarter, rising to $7.1 billion versus $5.8 billion in Q3 2019, while the iPad fared even better, with a staggering 31% increase in sales.
This is even more interesting when you consider that Apple didn’t release any particularly new groundbreaking products last quarter. While the iPad numbers were no doubt at least partially fuelled by Apple’s new 2020 iPad Pro, the rest of the iPad lineup hasn’t been updated since 2019, and even the newest iPad Pro wasn’t a significant jump over the 2018 model.
Further, the release of new 13-inch MacBook Air and MacBook Pro models with improved keyboards likely met some pent-up demand from those who had been trying to avoid the problematic butterfly keyboards, but it seems more likely that much of this was driven by demand for more capable computers and tablets by people working from home as well as students and families.