Apple boringly makes $7.8 billion in a few months
If a company could ever generate $7.8 billion of profit in three months and make it seem like no big deal, it's Apple.
The company pretty casually beat all expectations for its fiscal third quarter, announcing on Tuesday that it sold 40.4 million iPhones and generated sales of $42.36 billion.
Just another quarter for Apple, which has come under fire recently by critics that have said the company is out of fresh ideas for its flagship iPhone and is facing greater competition on almost every front.
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Not that those aren't fair points. Apple is facing serious upstarts in the smartphone industry in key markets, particularly overseas, while trying to figure out how it's going to fend off just about every other tech company in the U.S.
It's just that Apple is either not feeling the effects yet, or it's winning.
Apple's shares jumped up 5.4 percent in after-hours trading, a big move for the company's usually stable stock.
Some parts of its business are clearly in decline. Sales of iPads declined yet again, with few analysts expecting the tablet market to ever really recover.
More broadly, Apple's sales were down 15 percent compared to the same period last year. That was widely expected, but not something the company has to feel good about. For 13 years, Apple's sales had been increasing every quarter when compared to the year before. That was until April, when Apple logged a slight decline.
The general concern is that Apple's best days could be in the past. The company now faces serious competition in the smartphone market from upstarts like Xiaomi that are making cheaper phones for overseas markets such as India and China.
Those concerns have weighed on investors, sending Apple's stock into a relatively consistent slide over the past few months, off 7.4 percent in that time.
Tuesday's earnings report provided some evidence that maybe the decline hasn't been as bad as some had expected. Apple also provided a sense of how it thinks the upcoming quarter will go, and it's rosier than many had predicted. The company issued forward guidance that predicted a softer decline in revenue than had been feared.
Apple also gave us an updated idea of its insane pile of money that remains stored away for a rainy day (or research and development).
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The one missing piece continues to be any sort of breakout data on the Apple Watch.
Ever since its introduction, Apple watchers have waited for the day when the company provided some idea of how many units it has sold or how much money it has made from the product.
Apple Watch sales are technically under "other products," an area that also includes the Apple TV. That area's sales declined 16% compared to a year earlier.
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As for other fun tidbits, CEO Tim Cook boasted on a call with analysts following the earnings release that Apple Pay now accounted for 75 percent of "contactless" payments in the U.S.
Services, which includes Apple Pay, now account for 11 percent of the company's sales, which includes Apple Pay and AppleCare. That's an area the company expects to continue to grow.
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Jason Abbruzzese is a Business Reporter at Mashable. He covers the media and telecom industries with a particular focus on how the Internet is changing these markets and impacting consumers. Prior to working at Mashable, Jason served as Markets Reporter and Web Producer at the Financial Times. Jason holds a B.S. in Journalism from Boston University and an M.A. in International Affairs from Australian National University.
