Apple has announced the financial results for its fiscal 2017 third quarter (Q3), which ended July 1, 2017, and all is well for the tech giant.
The company reached a quarterly revenue of $45.4 billion USD, up seven per cent from the $42.4 billion USD in last year’s Q3 and surpassing most expert estimates. Apple says 61 per cent of Q3’s revenue came from international sales.
What’s even more notable, however, is that the App Store has driven the company’s services revenue to hit an all-time high. Services came in at $7.3 billion USD, up 22 per cent year-on-year, Apple CEO Tim Cook tells CNBC. This growth has allowed the company to achieve its goal of being “the size of a Fortune 100 company earlier than we thought,” he adds.
“With revenue up seven percent year-over-year, we’re happy to report our third consecutive quarter of accelerating growth and an all-time quarterly record for services revenue,” Cook explains in an Aug. 1 press release. “We hosted an incredibly successful Worldwide Developers Conference in June, and we’re very excited about the advances in iOS, macOS, watchOS and tvOS coming this fall.”
The company says it sold 41 million iPhones during the quarter, surpassing 1.2 billion iPhones sold in total, as well as successfully reduced its iPhone channel inventory by 3.3 million. In terms of its other products, Apple also reported 11.42 million iPads and 4.29 million Macs were shipped this quarter. While Apple did not share figures on AirPods or Apple Watch sales, Cook told investors on a conference call that sales of Apple Watch were up 50 per cent.
“We reported unit and revenue growth in all our product categories in the June quarter, driving 17 percent growth in earnings per share,” Luca Maestri, Apple’s CFO, adds. “We also returned $11.7 billion to investors during the quarter, bringing cumulative capital returns under our program to almost $223 billion.”
Looking ahead, Apple is predicting its fourth quarter will earn a revenue between $49 and $52 billion, and have a gross margin around 37.5 to 38 per cent.