Apple beats Q1 estimates with a huge 78.29mn iPhone sales figure and services growth

Apple’s back. Though Apple and Wall Street did expect the company to return to growth this quarter following the holiday season, but Cupertino giant surprised everyone with better than expected growth figures. Wall Street had predicted a revenue of $77.38 billion, Apple, however, reported all-time record quarterly revenue of $78.4 billion and and net quarterly profit of $17.9 billion, which marks a return to growth for the first time in several quarters for Apple.

While the company has fared well in almost every section, the show stopper has been the services segment with an 18 percent year over year growth and a net revenue in excess of $7.17 Billion. In the first quarter last year, the company reported around $6.1 billion in services revenue. “It was our best quarter ever for services,” Apple CEO Tim Cook said on the earnings call. “App Store customers broke all-time records in the holiday quarter, including $3 billion in purchases in December alone, making it the App Store’s single best month ever.”

Cook also said that revenue from the services sector is expected to double in the coming four years.

Meanwhile, Apple said it sold 78.29 million iPhones compared to 45.51 million iPhones in the last quarter of the last year. contributing $54.37 billion in revenue, which is up 5 percent year to year.

"We sold more iPhones than ever before and set all-time revenue records for iPhone, Services, Mac and Apple Watch, and we are very excited about the products in our pipeline,” said Cook.

"iPhone had a tremendous quarter thanks to exceptional demand that beat our own internal expectations. While iPhone 7 is our most popular model, we saw especially strong demand for iPhone 7 Plus, which was a higher portion of the new product mix than we've ever seen with Plus models in the past. Demand for iPhone 7 Plus exceeded supply throughout the quarter, and we came into supply/demand balance in January," added he.

Besides iPhone 7 sales, the other notable thing in this quarter is the introduction of the next-generation MacBook Pro, with its Touch Bar secondary display.

Apple sold 5.37 million Macs in the quarter, up from 4.88 million in the last quarter of the last year, contributing $7.24 billion in revenue, up 7 percent year to year.

Also, Apple sold 13.08 million iPads in the quarter, which is down 19 percent year over year. Apple’s Other Products category, which includes the newly unveiled AirPods wireless headphones as well as the Apple Watch, came in at $4.02 billion in revenue, which was down 8 percent. The company once again did not say exactly how many Watches were sold in the quarter.