Yesterday, Apple released the results for its 2026 fiscal fourth quarter (which ran from June 28, 2026, to September 6, 2026) and held a call with analysts to discuss them. The fiscal fourth quarter is typically a less important quarter for Apple. The fiscal quarter we are in now—the first fiscal quarter of the new fiscal year—is always Apple’s most important revenue quarter because of holiday sales. There were no blockbuster announcements on yesterday’s call, but Apple announced revenue of $114.5 billion, an all-time record and up 12% from this time last year. If you want to get all of the nitty-gritty details, you can listen to the audio from the announcement conference call on the Apple website, or you can read a transcript of the call prepared by Jason Snell of Six Colors. Apple’s official press release is here. Here are the items that stood out to me.
iPhone
- iPhone revenue was $57.6 billion, which is up 17% from this time last year. And Ternus said that it could have been even more than that but for Apple’s supply constraints.
- Apple CFO Kevan Parekh said that this was the best year ever for the iPhone in every geographic segment that Apple tracks. People around the world are buying lots of iPhones.
- More people upgraded an iPhone in the past quarter than in any other quarter in Apple’s history.
- Apple CEO John Ternus called the iPhone Duo “the most transformational iPhone since the original,” and he noted that the iPhone 18 Pro and Pro Max “take massive leaps forward on camera, battery life, and performance.”
- One analyst asked Ternus why Apple only introduced iPhone 18 Pro models and not iPhone 18 non-Pro models. Unsurprisingly, Ternus didn’t give a real answer, instead just saying that “we don’t make any comments about [the] future roadmap, but we’re excited about where we’re at.”
iPad
- iPad revenue was $6.2 billion. Last year and two years ago, that number was higher: around $7 billion.
- Ternus said that the new iPad mini is notable because it has a “stunning new OLED display and brings a super thin design to the smallest member of the iPad family.”
- Apple doesn’t release specific numbers, but Parekh did say that there are more people using the iPad around the world right now than ever before. He also noted that over half of the customers who purchased an iPad in the past quarter were purchasing their first iPad.
Other
- Ternus noted that more than 2.5 billion Apple devices are actively used today.
- Ternus noted Apple’s recent announcements regarding products for the Home, including the HomeView. It will be interesting to see customer demand for these new products, which go on sale next week.
- Apple’s services revenue was $31.6 billion, up 10% from a year ago and an all-time record.
- Thanks to this strong fiscal Q4, Apple’s revenue for fiscal year 2026 was $478.8 billion, up 15% year over year. Apple is essentially bringing in half a trillion dollars in revenue every year.
- Ternus mentioned that Apple (like everyone else) is facing unprecedentedly high memory prices. And he said that he expects those prices to continue to go up through the end of this calendar year. Apple announced that its gross margins were down this quarter, and I’m sure that is because Apple is not only raising product prices but also reducing its gross margins to account for the crazy high memory prices.