A few days ago, Apple released the results for its 2025 fiscal fourth quarter (which ran from June 29, 2025, to September 27, 2025) and held a call with analysts to discuss the results. The fiscal fourth quarter is typically a less important quarter for Apple. The fiscal quarter that we are in right now—the first fiscal quarter of the new fiscal year—is the one that is typically Apple’s big revenue quarter because of holiday sales. But this year, the fiscal fourth quarter was a particularly delightful one for Apple. Not only did Apple announce an all-time record of revenue for a fiscal fourth quarter ($102.5 billion) and an all-time record for a fiscal year ($416 billion), but Apple also feels so good about the outlook that CEO Tim Cook did something unusual for one of these calls and predicted that the next fiscal quarter would be the best ever for Apple and the best ever for iPhone. 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
- Apple’s iPhone revenue for the quarter was a record $49.025 billion, up 8% from this time last year.
- Apple CFO Kevan Parekh said that there are more people using an iPhone than ever before, and there were more people who switched to an iPhone in the past fiscal quarter than in any other fiscal fourth quarter for Apple.
- Apple said that it has been constrained on several models of the iPhone 17; it cannot make enough to keep up with demand, so there are lots of backorders. I know this from first-hand experience because I tried to buy an iPhone 17 Pro for my daughter’s birthday last week, but there are none in stock in New Orleans, so we need to wait about a week before our online order will arrive—even though the iPhone 17 Pro has been on sale for over six weeks.
- iPhone revenue was 49% of all Apple revenue this quarter, which is consistent with the last few years.
iPad
- Apple’s iPad revenue for the quarter was $6.952 billion, which is essentially the same as this time last year.
- Apple CFO Kevan Parekh said that there are more people using an iPad than ever before, and there were more people who switched to an iPad in the past fiscal quarter than in any other fiscal fourth quarter for Apple.
- Over half of the customers who purchased an iPad during the last fiscal quarter were buying their first iPad.
Other
- Apple’s revenue in the Services category achieved an all-time revenue record of $28.75 billion, growing 15% from a year ago. Moreover, as Jason Snell of Six Colors notes in his analysis of the quarter, this category has broken its all-time record for 13 quarters in a row. The Services category encompasses lots of different areas—it is much more than just people subscribing to Apple TV to watch Slow Horses and Severance—and it is a very important category because it is steady income for Apple, month after month. Customers may go two years or more before each iPhone purchase, but they continue to pay Apple every month for the different services that comprise this category.
- Over half of the customers who purchased an Apple Watch during the last fiscal quarter were buying their first Apple Watch.
- Apple believes that the fiscal quarter that we are in right now will be 10% to 12% higher than a year ago, making it Apple’s best fiscal first quarter ever. As noted above, the fiscal first quarter is always Apple’s best quarter of the year because it includes holiday sales. Thus, Apple is predicting that the quarter that is always its best of the year will also be, by far, its best quarter ever. Apple said that part of the reason for this optimism is that Apple believes that iPhone revenue will grow in double digits as compared to this time last year.