A few days ago, Apple released the results for its 2026 fiscal second quarter (which ran from December 28, 2025, to March 28, 2026) and held a call with analysts to discuss the results. Unlike Apple’s Q1, which contains all of the holiday sales, Apple’s Q2 is usually not a particularly interesting quarter. But this year was different: Apple saw revenue of over $100 billion in the quarter, the first time that has ever happened in any quarter besides a Q1. Those are impressive numbers, but as always, what interests me about these conference calls is not the revenue itself as much as what we learn about Apple’s products. If you want to get all of the nitty-gritty details, you can listen to the audio from the conference call on this page of Apple’s 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 for the quarter was just shy of $57 billion, up an astonishing 22% from this time last year. That is the all-time high for iPhone revenue in a Q2, easily beating the record of $51.3 billion in 2023 Q2.
- Cook said that Apple saw all of that revenue even though it couldn’t make iPhones fast enough. When asked if the constraint was the high price of memory right now, Cook said no; it is the limited supply of the advanced chips that Apple uses. Apparently, Apple should have ordered even more. However, Cook suggested that the current high cost of memory is going to have more impact on Apple in the future. It will be interesting to see if Apple is required to raise iPhone prices later this year.
- Cook mentioned that the current top-of-the-line iPhone—the iPhone 17 Pro Max—was used by astronauts during the Artemis II mission.
iPad
- iPad revenue for the quarter was $6.9 billion, up 8% from this time last year. (The all-time high iPad revenue in a Q2 was 2021 Q2, when revenue was $7.8 billion. The all-time high iPad revenue in any quarter was 2023 Q1, when revenue was $9.4 billion.)
Other
- Tim Cook has been attending hese calls for well over 20 years, starting even before he was CEO. But in light of the fact that he has announced that he will be retiring as CEO later this year, he had the next CEO, John Ternus, join him for this call. It will be interesting to see in the future if Ternus participates in these calls every quarter, like Cook has done, or if he will only participate from time-to-time, like Steve Jobs did.
- One analyst asked Cook what advice he gave Ternus about being CEO. Cook responded that “one of the most important decisions he’ll make is where to spend his time. And I would spend it where the greatest benefit to the company and the users are, and never forget the north star for the company,” which is “making the best products in the world that really enrich other people’s lives.”
- So far, the AI that is built-in to Apple devices, which Apple calls Apple Intelligence, is limited in what it can do. But Cook said that what makes Apple Intelligence special is that it is “woven into the core of our platforms” and not a “standalone feature.” I mention this because I personally think that this is the future of AI: something that is just built-in to everything that we do. Apple is not yet as far along as I would like, but I like what they are trying to do, and apparently Cook does as well since he chose to emphasis this aspect of it.
- One might argue—especially in a quarter like this one—that the most impressive thing that Apple makes is money. Since 2018, Apple has pursued a net cash neutral position where it didn’t try to build up a pile of cash and instead was use it on investments and on buying up stock. But Apple CFO Kevan Parekh announced that Apple is no longer pursuing a net cash neutral position. Parekh didn’t clarify what that means other than saying that it gives Apple “flexibility while also being very efficient and disciplined,” but it seems obvious to me that it means that Apple is now going to stockpile some of its massive revenue so that it has lots of cash on hand the next time that it wants to make a big acquisition—such as buying an AI company. Apple may soon go on a bit of a buying spree. We’ll see.
- Apple’s services revenue continues to increase every quarter, and it is now up to a record $31 billion, which is 16% higher than this time last year.
- There are 2.5 billion Apple devices currently in active use around the world, an all-time record.
- Cook said that demand for the new Mac Neo has been “off the charts” with “higher than expected demand.” As a result, there is more demand than supply.
- Cook stated that Apple will apply for a tariff refund from the U.S. government, but he promised that Apple would use that money to invest in “U.S. innovation and advanced manufacturing.” And this carefully worded statement is a perfect example of why Cook is the right person to continue to deal with Trump and other world leaders, even after Ternus becomes CEO.