Apple reports fourth quarter results
87 comments
·October 30, 2025haunter
827a
> Next 5 years or so (or even less) both the iPad and the Wearables, Home and Accessories category will overtake the sales of Macs.
Are we reading the same quarterly report?
Wearables/Home/Accessories is slightly higher than the Mac, yes, but its a category that has been trending poorly for Apple for ~18 months now IIRC, and that hasn't gotten better this quarter (9.04B->9.01B 3mo YoY). There's no foreseeable future where Vision starts driving Mac-like revenue (meaning, it'll be at least 2 years). Airpods are huge mainstays but have really hit market capacity and aren't growing. Apple Watch will see strong growth if they can successfully get glucose monitoring working, but that's an *if, and until then its slipping from an "upgrade every 3 years" to even longer lifecycle for most people.
Meanwhile: Mac is their fastest growing hardware segment by revenue (+12% 3mo YoY) (iPhone is +6%, iPad is flat, Services +15%).
iPhone aint going anywhere, Services are carrying their growth, but Mac is very solidly the #3 darling of this report. Their other product lines (Apple Watch, iPad, Airpods, etc) are interesting, successful businesses, but its unlikely we're going to see much growth out of them over the next 2 years. The story is iPhone, Services, and Mac, in that order, and there's no #4.
willtemperley
I wonder how much the Windows 11 debacle will increase Mac sales by.
madeofpalk
> Services (iCloud, apps, music, TV shows etc.) now bigger than every other category, except the iPhone, combined
This is reputation laundering. 'Services revenue' is undoubtably App Store game microtransactions, bigger than all other services categories combined.
wingspar
My understanding is Services includes the billions Google pays for Safari search default, reported to be $20 billion a year.
xfour
Seems like the obvious reason for this is that Mac is now a niche for people that operate computers, where there are likely 6 people that don't for every 1 that does. We keep hearing that the next generation is "true computer" illiterate.
The second reason is likely that there are computers that are 1/3 of the price subsidized by the terrible ad-supported OS installs. (Has anyone tried to setup a MS computer lately, it's an ad-box).
MrGilbert
> We keep hearing that the next generation is "true computer" illiterate.
We had that development with cars. 40 years ago, it was common to fix your own car. Nowadays, we have a subscription for seat warmers. The manual tells you to visit the dealer to get your brakes checked. Makes me sad, somehow. But people have choosen this path as a collective.
ghaff
People choose what to outsource and, as cars have become more complicated and require more diagnostic equipment, they go to a dealer/mechanic. Personally, I've never done a lot of personal car mechanic work.
On the other hand, I've done my own cooking more than not.
You make choices about what you do yourself and what you have others do for you.
Terr_
> We keep hearing that the next generation is "true computer" illiterate.
I 'member when "personal" computers were going to be a kind of capital-equipment made available to the masses, creating new levels of autonomy and personal control over our own lives, working for our goals and interests... Whoops.
Folks like Stallman did warn me though.
decafninja
My wife has been without a desktop or laptop for more than a decade. Her primary computing devices are her phone and iPad.
For doing tasks like online banking or booking plane tickets, I find the mobile experience frustrating and therefore do it on my laptop. She finds the laptop clunky and finds mobile much easier.
null
ceejayoz
There's also the fact that it's tough to share a smartphone like you can a computer. I suspect Apple hasn't made user switching a thing on iOS for this reason.
ReptileMan
>We keep hearing that the next generation is "true computer" illiterate.
This is logical result of walled gardens.
doctorpangloss
It also helps that they are moving phone financing off their balance sheet and onto AT&T’s, where people who don’t know anything think AT&T is giving away iPhone 17s right now, when of course, actually, Apple is.
The better question is, who do you know pays full price up front for an iPhone with no discounts? Only people who destroy or lose their current iPhone? The parents of teenagers giving the teenager the old phone and replacing theirs?
tpurves
Around a decade ago, even as they were just launching Apple Pay, Apple was trading at a multiple barely over 10x. Street was valuing Apple like a manufacturing OEM company. I remember buying a small chunck of shares at the time thinking, this is crazy, just the services revenue off of owning these platforms is going to become massive one day.
maximus_01
Good investment decision and obviously the street was very wrong, but the reason the multiple was low was because of concerns earnings were at risk from a) their issues in China (which they solved, at least for now, but was a very valid concern at the time) and b) android eating them (there was a narrative they were about to be blackberried, or that android was doing what windows did to mac). There are good reasons why that didn't happen.
lateforwork
Revenue growth is more interesting than raw revenue: iPhone up 6% YoY, Mac up 13%, iPad flat, Wearables, Home, and Accessories flat.
So Mac is doing very well!
tsimionescu
> Next 5 years or so (or even less) both the iPad and the Wearables, Home and Accessories category will overtake the sales of Macs.
I view this the exact opposite way. The death of the laptop in favor of tablets has been touted for about a decade now, and it has still failed to materialize. Wearables have even surpassed the iPad.
Not to mention, the Mac laptops have seen a recent surge of popularity last few years, due to still being the only realistic ARM-based laptop, with the battery life / weight vs performance you get from this. This is still likely to remain the reality for at least a few years, and thus they're likely to snowball even more based on this reputation.
Gigachad
Even if people still own laptops, if they aren’t using them as much they aren’t going to upgrade as frequently and they aren’t going to buy the expensive models.
Theres also the fact much of the developing world went straight to mobile, skipping laptops.
racl101
If they ever stopped making Macs guess I'd start using Linux other than just for servers.
seemaze
Framework desktop incoming here. (mac/iPad/i)OS 26 tipped me over the edge. Eyeing whether 7 years of GrapheneOS on a pixel will suffice as well..
ikamm
One would hope that before ceasing to make the hardware that they open it up and actually allow you to install other OSes
lapcat
These are the wrong numbers. You posted the 2024 numbers, not the 2025 numbers.
2025: iPhone $209.586 billion, Mac $33.708 billion, iPad $28.023 billion, Wearables, Home and Accessories $35.686 billion, Services $109.158 billion, Total $416.161 billion
haunter
Yeah you are right, my bad! Fixed
lapcat
I think your conclusion is also wrong. iPad sales are flat, and wearables are actually declining:
(Wearables, home, and accessories already surpassed Mac sales, although I don't know what exactly is included in accessories.)
Also, I don't think it's useful to compare wearables to Mac, because Watch isn't much of a computing platform, AirPods aren't a computing platform at all, and Vision Pro has almost no sales. This category is mostly accessories to iPhone.
https://sixcolors.com/post/2025/10/charts-apple-caps-off-bes...
browningstreet
Not too long ago the iPad was painted as a disappointing product line, relative to the iPhone. It's still bigger than the entire Mac business. Alas.
EDIT: Ack, you're right. Bad comment, self.
lapcat
No, iPad is not bigger than Mac. It's smaller. Look again at the numbers.
oxqbldpxo
All these companies depend on TSMC for their life.
sho_hn
And TSMC depends on machines by ASML they can also sell to others.
And ASML licensed the technology from EUV LLC.
Which was a conglomerate of a bunch of state-funded US research labs.
And the US cut its science funding.
Misery all the way down!
nomilk
Had to look up what TSMC meant (Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company).
What would Apple's next best option be if a war rendered TSMC unavailable?
madeofpalk
https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2025/02/apple-will-spend-more...
> The fund’s expansion includes a multibillion-dollar commitment from Apple to produce advanced silicon in TSMC’s Fab 21 facility in Arizona. Apple is the largest customer at this state-of-the-art facility, which employs more than 2,000 workers to manufacture the chips in the United States. Mass production of Apple chips began last month.
martinald
There's an amazing book on Apple in China all about this issue (and more). It's a great read and I'd highly recommend if you're interested.
Also Chip Wars is really good. I may be confusing which one is which because I read them back to back, but they overlap!
nomilk
Thanks! I've added both to my reading list
45764986
If a war rendered TSMC unavailable it would crash the global economy. There is no next best option.
colechristensen
>What would Apple's next best option be if a war rendered TSMC unavailable?
Onshore TSMC fabs followed by Intel fabs.
Properly motivated, I think Intel and Apple could do a lot relatively quickly.
45764986
[dead]
seizethecheese
If true, TSMC would command much higher margins. Their net revenue is a fraction of Nvidia or Apple
trenchpilgrim
TSMC's business is much higher risk, each improvement to manufacturing process is a massive investment that's never a guaranteed success.
andy_ppp
Apple could substantially eat into Nvidia’s AI lunch if they really tried, honestly Macs are fast enough… my guess is by the time M6 is coming out they will have external GPUs available for both the data centre and home use. If I was them I’d already be taking orders, power requirements alone even if they aren’t as fast 2 nodes ahead would make their offering sensational.
fnordpiglet
I don’t think so. The GPU die itself isn’t the key it’s the interconnects and data center scale infra coupled with their closed software. If it were just GPUs AMD is better positioned than Apple.
reaperducer
by the time M6 is coming out they will have external GPUs available for both the data centre and home use.
I thought there were already external GPUs for Macs. Since before COVID, IIRC.
larkost
There were eGPUs for Macs, but only the Intel ones. To my knowledge there are no drivers for eGPUs for Apple Silicon. My guess is that without Apple's involvement it would be near-impossible to get graphics accelerators working.
In theory you could make things work for some sort of computational acceleration (e.g.: AI, or some OpenCL work), but I am not sure that that market is really worth all of the work it would take. For those sorts of things it is probably a lot easier to setup an external (Linux) box, and send the work over.
yRetsyM
Interesting that Google and Apple matched their quarterly earnings in revenue .
lapcat
This stuck out like a sore thumb to me:
Q4 2024: Income before provision for income taxes $29.610 billion, Provision for income taxes $14.874 billion
Q4 2025: Income before provision for income taxes $32.804 billion, Provision for income taxes $5.338 billion
[EDIT:] The 2024 taxes were actually an aberration.
"the one-time charge recognized during the fourth quarter of 2024 related to the impact of the reversal of the European General Court’s State Aid decision" https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2024/10/apple-reports-fourth-...
aauchter
Their 2025 US taxes are actually higher. In Q4 2024 "Apple paid a one-time income tax charge of $10.2 billion in order to resolve the tax issue with Ireland, which dates to 2016."
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/apple-profit-drops-36-tech-20...
FredPret
Corporate income tax is one of those ideas that are immensely popular politically ("someone who is not me will pay billions to benefit me? yay!") but not supported by economic theory or real economic outcomes. Rent control / other price controls is another one ("No more rent increases for me, yay!").
Personal income taxes are a better choice according to [0] and that makes sense if you think about it. Let companies go wild creating wealth; eventually the company matures, growth slows, and instead of reinvesting, the money mostly gets paid out to employees and owners as salaries, dividends, or stock buybacks. That's the point where it's most efficient to tax it.
[0] https://www.economicsobservatory.com/which-taxes-are-best-an...
[1] https://taxfoundation.org/taxedu/primers/primer-not-all-taxe...
aauchter
Correct. Corporate income tax is really a tax on shareholders (alternative to paying tax is paying shareholders a dividend). The corporate tax rate hits all owners regardless of income/wealth. That includes pension funds, 401ks, small investors, etc. Proponents of progressive taxes should be against corporate tax and in favor of income tax, property tax, etc.
FredPret
It also takes money away from the corporation, when they should be doing one of these:
- spend their profits to try and grow, but fail; thus spreading their capital into the rest of the economy
- spend their profits to try and grow, and succeed; not only spreading capital but creating new wealth that will eventually work its way around to the shareholders
- return it to shareholders, where it gets taxed
lotsofpulp
Earned income tax makes no sense, it targets the young and hard working, and work should be maximally rewarded. Land value tax is what makes sense, targeting rent seekers and the wealthy. Also consumption taxes, if one is concerned about things like the environment or substance abuse.
Land value tax is a consumption tax too, since defending and servicing and routing around one’s occupied surface area of the earth is very costly for the rest of society.
curiouscats
Actually it was a huge tax addition in 2024 (from Europe over dispute about how Ireland had taxed Apple for many years). In 2024 Apple added 14.4 billion in additional taxes accrued over many years.
nomel
Are different sources of income taxed differently? Could it partly be from some change in income sources? Seems Services is more significant this quarter.
jdminhbg
No, the 2024 number is goosed by paying a big back tax bill after a court decision in the EU.
Psillisp
Yes Tax Avoidance strategies are inversely correlated to enforcement efforts.
What could have possibly changed…
nerdponx
Enough to pay for everything DOGE and the Trump admin cut in 2025, assuming a big chunk of that is US taxes.
aauchter
Effective US tax rate is higher in 2025. The 2024 tax number was inflated due to a one time payment relating to Ireland which actually dates back to 2016.
hdgvhicv
[flagged]
bilsbie
How come they don’t add AI?
peterspath
They have enough "AI" stuff. People just don't know it is AI. That is the best way of integrating AI into your product(s). The tech behind stuff doesn't really matter for the end user.
other companies should also follow that trend, use ai for useful features, just give the feature a good name... no need to mention "ai"... because next year it could be something else that is powering the feature.
eastbound
Siri can’t tell the time and people on Android can remove passerby’s from pictures, we can’t. I’m an Apple fanboy but Apple has been coasting for 10 years.
bikelang
Siri can tell the time (I just checked - I’ve never tried before now) and you’ve been able to remove people/cars from photos for a while now I believe. Looks like iOS 16? Still took way too long and it wouldn’t surprise me if it is crap compared to Android (I haven’t used it). They also finally added call screening - idk why that took so long as my Pixel 3 had it over 5 years ago.
sethops1
If people are buying iPhones without AI mashed into every orifice, why bother?
smt88
They tried and made fools of themselves. They're trying again right now.
WorldPeas
Serves them right. Make products people want and they buy, ignore them, and they don't. I thought Apple was supposed to be a simple company selling complicated things.
hyperhello
What do you mean serves them right? They made records.
WorldPeas
The title was changed since I made my comment. Seems the message of their earnings increase outdid trepidation about their future.
mikestew
Beats earnings consensus, up 4.5% in after hours, yeah, that’ll learn ‘em. You misread something, but I’m not sure what it is.
alsetmusic
> Make products people want and they buy, ignore them, and they don't.
What does this even mean? When I went to my local Apple Store to see the iPhone air in person (to decide if it was right for me, which it was), they had a line out the door for people who wanted to buy new phones. Their Mac business is very healthy since introducing their own silicon. Everyone in the Bay Area (skewed, I know) has AirPods on the train or at the grocery store.
smt88
AirPods are certainly super popular, but I can't think of many places that are extreme outliers in almost every category like the Bay Area. A lot of startups have failed assuming their business that worked for Bay Area customers would work elsewhere.
maximus_01
This is true but airpods is a bad example. They are a runaway success. Estimates are they did around $25bn of revenue in the last year. For context the highest annual revenue Bose ever did was $4bn (since declined). Sonos does something like $1.5bn. If Airpods was a standalone company it would be one of the biggest consumer hardware companies in the world.
null
Kind of telling that
1, the iPhone outsells every other category by 5-7x ratio, and the Mac (which includes everything from Macbooks to Mac Minis to iMacs) barely sells more than the iPad.
2, Services (iCloud, apps, music, TV shows etc.) now bigger than every other category, except the iPhone, combined
Basically 76% of the sales are iPhones and Services
(millions)
iPhone $209,586
Mac $33,708
iPad $28,023
Wearables, Home and Accessories $35,686
Services $109,158
Total $416,161
Next 5 years or so (or even less) both the iPad and the Wearables, Home and Accessories category will overtake the sales of Macs.