The Numbers
First up of course were Apple’s actual sales numbers, which just exceeded $100 billion in revenue for the first time in the company’s history.
Specifically, Apple posted all-time record revenue of $111.4 billion and profits of $28.76 billion, representing a 21 percent increase from Q1 2020 — back during a time when we’d barely heard of the coronavirus.
More significantly, Apple reported double-digit growth in every one of its product categories, with iPhone sales alone growing by $10 billion — a 17 percent increase over last year’s holiday quarter, and while the raw dollar amount increases in other categories were slightly more modest, percentage-wise they all grew by at least 20% or more.
In fact, likely fuelled primarily by the new iPad Air, the iPad category saw the largest jump, growing from just under $6 billion last year to $8.4 billion in sales this year — an increase of 41%.
Here’s the rundown for each category:
- iPhone: $65.6 billion
- Mac: $8.7 billion
- iPad: $8.4 billion
- Wearables, Home and Accessories: $13 billion
- Services: $15.8 billion
These latest results show that even though iPhone sales dropped by $2 billion in the previous quarter, since of course the new models didn’t drop until October, Apple more than made up for it in the holiday quarter, and in fact saw stronger iPhone sales overall in Q1 2021 alone than in the previous iPhone release and holiday quarters (Q4/Q1) combined.