Technology

Apple quarterly revenue increases, even as China sales decline 11%


Appleā€™s latest earnings were a mixed bag filled with slipping iPhone sales and countered by rising revenue.

Reporting after the bell Thursday, the iPhone makerā€™s overall revenue in the first quarter of 2025 beat Wall Street expectations, with a 4% bump to $124.3 billion over the same time last year.

Apple reported net income of $36.33 billion, up 7.1% from $33.92 billion in the same year-ago period.

The increase came even as the company missed iPhone estimates, while experiencing an 11.1% sales drop in China, down to $18.51 billion. Itā€™s the largest drop in this key region since a nearly 13% dip in Q1 2024.

The worldā€™s largest smartphone market has proven increasingly difficult for the company, owing to more intense competition from domestic manufacturers, including Oppo and Vivo. Huawei, which saw a massive drop in sales as trade restrictions were imposed by the first Trump Administration, has since surged in its home country.

In a conversation with CNBC, CEO Tim Cook placed some of the blame at the feet of Apple Intelligence ā€” which isnā€™t currently available in China ā€” along with several other key markets. Appleā€™s small model generative AI platform is, by far, the biggest selling point for the iPhone 15, which debuted late-last year.

ā€œDuring the December quarter, we saw that in markets where we had rolled out Apple intelligence, that the year-over-year performance on the iPhone 16 family was stronger than those markets where we had not rolled out Apple intelligence,ā€ Cook said.

The CEO also pointed to channel inventory, which has restricted the availability of new hardware in the country.

iPhone sales declined slightly year-over-year, in spite of the companyā€™s anticipation of an Apple Intelligence-driven boost. The platform experienced a slow roll out in iOS 18, with features arriving in waves. Some features, like news summaries, had a rocky launch, as well. Apple paused the feature to address an issue with surfacing incorrect information.

Both Mac and iPad revenue grew by 15% for the quarter, thanks to the launch of a new iPad Mini, iMac, Mac Mini, and MacBook Pro. Services ā€“ which includes things like Apple TV+, Apple Music, and iCloud ā€” saw 14% growth for the quarter.

Cook noted that Apple now boasts one billion subscriptions across its content offerings and third-party apps.

Overall, analysts are greeting the news positively, as the company beat expectations in several key categories, despite headwinds. Earlier this week, Appleā€™s late entry into the generative AI space also shielded the company, as the arrival of DeepSeek R1ā€™s platform resulted in a large buy off for companies like NVIDIA.



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