Apple earnings beat forecasts on iPhone sales growth

The company reported profit of $24 billion and revenue of $94.8 billion in the first quarter of this year.

“We are pleased to report an all-time record in services and a March quarter record for iPhone despite the challenging macroeconomic environment,” Apple chief executive Tim Cook said in an earnings release.

Apple shares surged 2% in after trading hours.

Apple’s iPhone sales rose 1.5% to $51.33 billion. Mac sales fell more than 30% to $7.17 billion. Sales in wearables business, which includes devices like AirPods and the Apple Watch, declined less than 1% to $8.76 billion.

Apple’s biggest growth segment was its services business, which includes products like iCloud and Apple Pay, which grew 5.5% to $20.9 billion.

Apple’s sales in China dropped 2.9% to $17.8 billion, a slightly larger drop than overall revenue.

During the first three months of 2023, global smartphone shipments have declined 13%.

Apple said its board of directors authorized a 24 cents-per  share dividend in addition to share repurchases. The company approved $90 billion in additional buybacks.

Apple has in recent weeks announced new service businesses such as a high-yield savings account.

Bloomberg has reported the iPhone maker could unveil a mixed-reality headset as soon as next month, when it holds its annual software developer conference.

Cook said Apple now has 975 million subscribers on its platform, which includes both Apple services and third-party apps, up from 935 million last quarter and an increase of 150 million from a year ago.

As per Reuters report quoting Cook, the company set a fiscal second-quarter record for iPhone sales. “We were thrilled by our performance in emerging markets,” Cook said.

“We set records for the iPhone installed base in every geographic segment, and we had very strong ‘new to’ (sales in) emerging markets, particularly in Brazil, India and Mexico,” he added.

“We had no material shortages at all during the quarter across any of the products,” he said.