And yet about 2 weeks after earnings we’ll get people here blathering about how apple is lost as a company, about how tim cook will doom the whole thing, yadda yadda yadda
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Apple Reports 4Q 2025 Results: $27.5B Profit on $102.5B Revenue
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Not the best day to pound that story 😂
It's a forum tradition going back many years. Yet under Cook's leadership Apple is now one of the most successful consumer tech companies in the world, with 1 Billion+ active/repeat happy Apple customers who love purchasing Apple products. Year after year after year.
They still sell iPods? Lol
Apple today announced financial results for the fourth fiscal quarter of 2025, which corresponds to the third calendar quarter of the year.
For the quarter, Apple posted revenue of $102.5 billion and net quarterly profit of $27.5 billion, or $1.85 per diluted share, compared to revenue of $94.9 billion and net quarterly profit of $14.7 billion, or $0.97 per diluted share, in the year-ago quarter.
Apple's profits in the year-ago quarter were hit hard by a one-time charge of $10.2 billion over tax issues in the European Union. Without that one-time charge, Apple's profits in the year-ago quarter would have been $1.64 per share.
Gross margin for the most recent quarter was 47.2 percent, compared to 46.2 percent in the year-ago quarter. Apple also declared a quarterly dividend payment of $0.26 per share, payable on November 13 to shareholders of record as of November 10.
Apple set September quarter records for total revenue, iPhone revenue, and earnings per share, and an all-time record for Services revenue.
For the full fiscal year, Apple recorded $416.2 billion in sales and $112.0 billion in net income, compared to $391.0 billion in sales and $93.7 billion in net income for fiscal 2024. Both numbers set all-time fiscal year records for Apple, topping previous highs set in fiscal 2022.As has been the case for over five years now, Apple is once again not issuing detailed guidance for the current quarter ending in December, though it should provide some color on things in its conference call.
Apple will provide live streaming of its fiscal Q4 2025 financial results conference call at 2:00 pm Pacific, and MacRumors will update this story with coverage of the conference call highlights.
Conference call recap ahead...
Click here to read rest of article...
Article Link: Apple Reports 4Q 2025 Results: $27.5B Profit on $102.5B Revenue
And would have been true if not for Steve Jobs.
Steve was obviously irreplaceable. Tim was probably the best person on the planet to milk Steve's inventions for all they were worth, but the lack of a visionary CEO has been exposed in the AI era.
If Tim Cook was Apple CEO before Steve Jobs was ever Apple CEO, Cook would’ve fired Jobs for not fitting in with Cook’s MBA-degree world view. Cook would’ve never been able to appreciate Jobs’s visionary approach. And that’s precisely why Cook fired Apple’s most Jobs-like employee, Scott Forstall.
Wow while I love my iPhone, most of my work gets done on a iMac or iPad Pro. Surprised to see iPhone composing nearly 50% of Apple’s profits.
Apple today announced financial results for the fourth fiscal quarter of 2025, which corresponds to the third calendar quarter of the year.
For the quarter, Apple posted revenue of $102.5 billion and net quarterly profit of $27.5 billion, or $1.85 per diluted share, compared to revenue of $94.9 billion and net quarterly profit of $14.7 billion, or $0.97 per diluted share, in the year-ago quarter.
Apple's profits in the year-ago quarter were hit hard by a one-time charge of $10.2 billion over tax issues in the European Union. Without that one-time charge, Apple's profits in the year-ago quarter would have been $1.64 per share.
Gross margin for the most recent quarter was 47.2 percent, compared to 46.2 percent in the year-ago quarter. Apple also declared a quarterly dividend payment of $0.26 per share, payable on November 13 to shareholders of record as of November 10.
Apple set September quarter records for total revenue, iPhone revenue, and earnings per share, and an all-time record for Services revenue.
For the full fiscal year, Apple recorded $416.2 billion in sales and $112.0 billion in net income, compared to $391.0 billion in sales and $93.7 billion in net income for fiscal 2024. Both numbers set all-time fiscal year records for Apple, topping previous highs set in fiscal 2022.As has been the case for over five years now, Apple is once again not issuing detailed guidance for the current quarter ending in December, though it should provide some color on things in its conference call.
Apple will provide live streaming of its fiscal Q4 2025 financial results conference call at 2:00 pm Pacific, and MacRumors will update this story with coverage of the conference call highlights.
Conference call recap ahead...
Click here to read rest of article...
Article Link: Apple Reports 4Q 2025 Results: $27.5B Profit on $102.5B Revenue
And that is why Tim Cook is the right man to lead Apple. I agree with you that Scott Forstall is an impressive engineer, a talented man, and one of the OG team responsible for making the iPhone possible. I also agree with you that Scott Forstall was arguably the closest to Steve Jobs there was. None of this was ever in doubt.
And Tim Cook fired him anyways. Because he (correctly) recognised that Apple does not need another Steve Jobs. The price of individual brilliance is collective friction, and only a founder has the cultural capital to make the elevation of the individual possible. Steve Jobs was the glue that united a strong, stubborn, and talented company that continually operated under high pressure. What do you do when the glue is gone?
Tim Cook’s answer - the glue is Apple, and the ideology is design. It is a shared belief system that “No” is more important than “Yes,” that focus is essential to making great products, and that no one individual is essential. Not Steve Jobs, and certainly not Scott Forstall who famously did not get along with the other executives at Apple.
It’s not unlike a revolutionary movement where there is the transcendent leader, surrounded by the true believers. Eventually the leader departs, his closest lieutenants scheme and fight for the throne, and the entire movement implodes.
The principal in my school did the exact same thing when she took over years ago. There are just too many things that need to be done to waste time dealing with roadblocks that waste your time and energy.
More so than anything else, I have no doubt that Tim Cook understands what makes Apple uniquely Apple. By continuing to argue that Scott Forstall absolutely should have stayed on in Apple, you have demonstrated that you don’t understand revolutions, you don’t understand culture, and you don’t understand Apple.
But in your defense, not many people do either. And that’s why they continue to read Apple wrong year after year after year.
You sure don’t know how to read the room, do you?
And… what universe are you living in?
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i like it. a refreshing change in appearance. if you have issues toggle on Tint mode.
If Scott was full of motivation and ideas and had world class talent, he would launch business himself or be sought to run an existing one. He's been retired for a decade doing other hobby stuff which means theres not much juice left there to squeeze.
Amazing how relatively flat that Mac sales trend line is, despite these Macs for several years now being significantly better than Intel Macs, and leaps and bounds better than windows trash. Probably inflation keeping people from being able to afford them. People will typically spend more on a phone which is more of a status symbol and some people’s primary computer outside of work.
there's no growth in the category at all. apple keeps the same share. and the m series is so good, the upgrade cycle is probably longer than before.
I think you missed a key thing that made Apple what it was in the Jobs era and what is different without Jobs. The phrase "the ideology is design" is correct. But, the rest of what you say is not the way Jobs operated. Focus is not a replacement for vision. Consensus in a social environment is not the same thing as shared belief. "No one individual is essential" ignores the importance of visionary leadership and a strict consistent single-minded view.
I'm not going to argue that Apple should find a new Jobs or that the older ways should be fetishized. Clearly, what Apple is now doing is working about as well as (and likely better than) anyone could hope in a post-Jobs era. I'm only saying that I think you've analyzed the current Apple incorrectly.
Apple operates mostly on consensus now. It has changed from Jobs-driven focus to a functional matrix. Design is no longer driven from vision, but is controlled by a risk-averse, committee-based process. Vision has been replaced by iterative committee reviews.
"Design is Function" is the no longer the unifying principle. Form and function used to be inseparable. Design integrating both was preeminent. After Ive's left, design was subordinated to operations. Priority is now given to manufacturability and cost control. Design has shifted from raison d'être to a mere deliverable constrained by operational and financial consensus. The latest hype over Liquid Glass–an aesthetic overhaul that reduces usability–shows that design has been detached from function and now exists mostly as a marketing concept.
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And it increasingly feels to me like that is what people are getting because that is what people want.
Think of the uproar when the 2016 MBP was released. It dropped MagSafe, it replaced every port with usb-c, it was thinner, and the "pros" didn't like the changes at all. In the end, Apple went back to a "safe" design where they brought back MagSafe, HDMI and the sd-card slot, while making the 16" MBP so much thicker and heavier, and consensus seems to love it.
It just feels totally backwards to me. I feel like MagSafe no longer has a place in a world where MacBooks can easily last all day thanks to apple silicon (no need to be camping near a power outlet at an airport or lecture hall). Plus, if you are using a usb-c dock to connect your laptop to an external display, you are charging it via its usb-c port anyways. Also, I would argue that an extra usb-c port is far more versatile than an additional HDMI port, since I can transform that 4th usb-c port into any port I want (given the right adaptor). Also, it feels that people are far more likely to have a usb-c cable at their desk which they can use to charge any of their devices (eg: iPhone, iPad, MacBook, switch, AirPods), rather than MagSafe (which can only charge your laptop).
In all, usb-c felt like the perfect port to go all-in on, and the very self-professed "tech savvy" people I would expect to embrace and champion this transition, instead chose to double down on the old and familiar while rejecting change and progress. Till this day, it still baffles me to no end.
Same with iPhones. The most popular iPhone is the pro max, which has the biggest battery, the largest display and the best camera, while also being the thickest and the heaviest of the lot. You have the vapour chamber forming its own "island" on the top back of the iPhone, leaving more room for battery (this to me is form and function). Every attempt to deviate from this norm (think the iPhone mini and the iPhone air) appears to have gotten very little traction. So again, I don't blame Apple for opting for the "safe" route when that is what has been the most financially rewarding.
Also, the reality is that people are upgrading less frequently, so I am fine with a slower cadence of feature releases from Apple. It feels more sustainable in the long run. The fact that I am comfortable holding on to my 13 Pro Max for the fifth year, is a feature, not a bug.
I also feel that Liquid Glass is a testament to what Apple does best - integrating hardware and software. Moreso than AI at any rate. I have a theory that we may see of Liquid Glass in a rumoured pair of AR glasses in the future, but that's also just a theory for now. One common trope of Apple is that they are fond of laying down the foundation several years in advance, and many things that seem idiosyncratic today will make sense some day in the future. Suffice to say, I don't hate Liquid Glass, though it's admittedly still buggy and taxes my 13 pro max battery more heavily.
The charging port at the bottom of the apple mouse is endlessly mocked. I happen to find it clever, and find it an acceptable compromise in exchange for a smooth, unblemished glass top. Same with the charging method of the first-gen Apple Pencil (sticking the lightning tip into the iPad). I feel they were clever yet functional, yet people just choose to explain away Apple's design choices instead of trying to better understand them.
At the same time, we have also gotten AirPods and the Apple Watch during this time, and I like them very much. I just can't go back to a normal watch now.
I don't know what the future will bring. But this has been another strong quarter, and a lot of it is thanks to a strong foundation put in by Tim Cook years ago. You need a robust supply chain and standardisation of parts in order to reliably ship well over 200 million iPhones every year (especially with the added uncertainty of tariffs), which is why operations needs to have a voice and a seat at the table (the best designed phone is useless if Apple can't make enough of them to sell). I would advise Apple to just give up on AI altogether, since the absence of the aforementioned doesn't seem to have impacted consumer sentiment one bit, but maybe they see something I don't. I believe management is also beginning to realise that services is one aspect of the Apple ecosystem that continues to be way undermonetised (I wasn't surprised when they announced possible ads in Maps; I expected it).
In summary, I see the apple ecosystem gaining momentum in the market, and next quarter promises to be another immensely profitable one as well. Rather than endlessly criticising Apple for no longer being design-led, perhaps stop comparing Apple too much to other companies, and instead allow Apple’s unique attributes to speak for themselves and recognise how Apple is able to set themselves apart from the competition.
It never ceases to amaze me at the failures, bugs, mistakes etc that the Apple Faithful, apologists and devotees put up with. It’s as though they can do no wrong.
That’s very true. My M1 MacBook Pro is still a very, very productive device, and I use it for software development. I am struggling to come up with a reason to upgrade despite the clear performance improvements.