Apple Smashes Earnings As Lifetime iPhone Shipments Hit 3 Billion
Apple surprised Wall Street with its latest earnings report, which revealed a 10% year-over-year leap in revenue to $94 billion. That marks Apple's biggest quarterly revenue growth in nearly four years, and Apple managed to do it amid criticisms and concerns over its artificial intelligence strategy. A big reason why is because its iPhone devices continue to sell like gangbusters.
During an earnings call, Apple CEO Tim Cook revealed that Apple recently shipped its 3 billionth iPhone device since launching back in 2007, calling the moment a "significant milestone."
That's obviously a lot of iPhones, though it's also spread across nearly two decades of sales. Even so, the iPhone remains a popular device. During its fiscal 2025 third quarter ended June 28, 2025, iPhone sales tallied over $44.58 billion, which is up from $39.29 billion the same quarter a year ago. That represents an impressive 13.46% increase, undoubtedly driving in large part by the iPhone 16 series.
The strong quarter pushed Apple's nine-month tally for iPhone sales to $160.56 billion, versus $154.96 billion during the same nine-month period a year ago.
"Today Apple is proud to report a June quarter revenue record with double-digit growth in iPhone, Mac and Services and growth around the world, in every geographic segment," Cook said. "At WWDC25, we were excited to introduce a beautiful new software design that extends across all of our platforms, and we announced even more great Apple Intelligence features."
To his point, quarterly Mac and iPad sales reached $8 billion and $6.58 billion, respectively. Apple's Wearables, Home, and Accessories sales added another $7.4 billion to the pile, while Services revenue reached $27.42 billion.
"In Mac, we had another strong quarter with revenue of $8 billion, up 15% year-over-year, largely driven by the strength of the M4 MacBook Air. We set a June quarter record for upgraders on Mac, and we saw great performance in emerging markets with strong double-digit growth on revenue as well as strong double-digit growth on both upgraders and customers new to Mac," Cook said.
All combined, Apple's nine-month tally topped $313.69 billion, which is a nearly 6% gain from the $296.1 billion in nine-month net sales during this same time period last year. Notably, Apple's iPad and Wearables, Home, And Accessories both notched revenue drops compared to the previous quarter, though for nine-month sales, only the latter slid, albeit just slightly.
The big question facing Apple is how it plans to approach the burgeoning AI market, especially amid reports of Apple losing key talent to Meta. During the earnings call, Cook called AI "one of the most profound technologies of our lifetime" while noting that Apple is significantly increasing its AI investments.
"We've acquired around seven companies this year. And that's companies from all walks of life, not all AI oriented. And so we're doing one, think of it as one every several weeks. We're very open to M&A that accelerates our road map," Cook stated in response to a question about the need to accelerate Apple's AI roadmap.
It will be interesting to see how it all plays out. For now, however, Apple's strong earnings have given it a bit of room to breathe.
