Apple Reports Q4 2024 Earnings: $94.9 Billion in Revenue
Credit: Chamhei / ShutterstockToggle Dark Mode
Apple has just reported its fourth-quarter results for 2024, with the iPhone unsurprisingly driving record revenue and the company’s services revenue continuing to reach new heights.
The company’s fiscal year begins in October, and a result its fiscal 2024 fourth quarter ended on September 28, 2024. For that July–September quarter, Apple posted revenue of $94.9 billion, an increase of 6 percent from the year-ago quarter Jul–Sep quarter. That works out to quarterly diluted earnings per share of $0.97. However, that amount was reduced from $1.64 due to “the one-time charge recognized during the fourth quarter of 2024 related to the impact of the reversal of the European General Court’s State Aid decision.”
This “one-time charge” refers to a tax penalty of around €13 billion that Apple is now required to pay in a battle over billions of dollars in back taxes allegedly owed to the Irish government that’s been ongoing since 2016 when the European Commission (EC) concluded an investigation where it determined that Ireland had granted illegal tax benefits to Apple. While the EU’s second-highest court, the European General Court, overturned that 2016 EC ruling, the highest EU court — the Court of Justice of the European Union — has reversed that lower court ruling, giving a final judgment that Ireland is required to recover those billions of dollars in back taxes from Apple — whether it wants to or not.
While that’s a sizeable chunk of Apple’s nearly $100 billion in revenue, the company’s board of directors has still declared a cash dividend of $0.25 per share of the Company’s common stock that will be payable to shareholders on November 14, 2024.
Our record business performance during the September quarter drove nearly $27 billion in operating cash flow, allowing us to return over $29 billion to our shareholders. We are very pleased that our active installed base of devices reached a new all-time high across all products and all geographic segments, thanks to our high levels of customer satisfaction and loyalty.Luca Maestri, Apple’s CFO
The Numbers
It shouldn’t come as a surprise that the bulk of Apple’s $94.9 billion in revenue came from iPhone sales, which accounted for 48.7% of Apple’s revenue. However, Apple’s Services category continued its meteoric rise, crossing the 25% mark for the first time to reach 26.3% of Apple’s overall revenue.
Nearly every category also saw a healthy increase in revenue this year compared to the year-ago quarter, with only wearables seeing a drop. Here’s the breakdown:
- iPhone: $46.22 billion (up 5.5%)
- Mac: $7.74 billion (up 1.7%)
- iPad: $6.95 billion (up 7.9%)
- Wearables: $9.04 billion (down 3.0%)
- Services: $24.97 billion (up 11.9%)
That’s a nice turnaround from the Q4 2023, where iPhone revenue grew by only 2.8% from Q4 2022, iPad revenue dropped 10.2%, and Mac revenue plummeted by a staggering 33.8%. While some of that was attributable to great spending in 2022 on the heels of the global health pandemic — Q4 iPad sales surged to their highest-ever in the summer of 2021 — it’s also tied largely to Apple’s product release cycles. Apple released one of its best-selling laptops, the M2 MacBook Air, in Q4 2022, driving Mac sales to an extreme peak of $11.5 billion that summer.
Today Apple is reporting a new September quarter revenue record of $94.9 billion, up 6 percent from a year ago. During the quarter, we were excited to announce our best products yet, with the all-new iPhone 16 lineup, Apple Watch Series 10, AirPods 4, and remarkable features for hearing health and sleep apnea detection. And this week, we released our first set of features for Apple Intelligence, which sets a new standard for privacy in AI and supercharges our lineup heading into the holiday season.Tim Cook, Apple’s CEO
While Apple’s September iPhone 16, Apple Watch Series 10, and AirPods 4 undoubtedly contributed to the Q4 sales figures, it’s important to remember that most of those didn’t go on sale until nearly the end of the quarter. It’s likely we’ll see much more impact from Apple’s latest products in the Q1 2025 “holiday quarter,” plus more substantial growth in Mac sales as a result of this week’s new M4 Mac lineup.
