Apple revenue, profits beat expectations on iPhone, Mac sales as Tim Cook era nears end

Apple on Thursday reported sales and profits that beat Wall Street expectations, fueled by its customers snapping up iPhones and MacBooks amid price increases across the consumer electronics sector.Apple said sales for its fiscal third quarter ended June 27 were up 16.4% to $109.42 billion, compared with analyst estimates of a 15.5% rise to $108.65 billion, according to LSEG data, and Apple’s own forecast of 14% to 17% sales growth.Apple’s third-quarter profits were $2.02 per share, with 11 cents attributable to tariff refunds from the US government.Even excluding the tariff refunds, Apple’s profits were still above Wall Street estimates of $1.89 per share.Apple shares fell 4% in extended trading after the results.The decline comes after Apple, whose shares have risen more than 22% this year, reclaimed its throne as the world’s most valuable company from AI chip leader Nvidia.With help from Alphabet’s Google, Apple earlier this year unveiled a revamped version of its Siri virtual assistant with a raft of new AI-driven features, and consumers and software developers alike have been gravitating toward its Mac products to handle AI tasks on device rather than paying monthly fees.Driving Apple’s results was a 21.7% increase in iPhone sales to $54.25 billion, above analyst estimates of $53.86 billion, according to LSEG data.

Those iPhone sales were Apple’s best-ever for a third quarter, when phone sales typically begin to slow as customers anticipate new models during the fall.But this year, Apple customers are racing to snap up iPhones after a global crunch in memory chip supplies prompted Apple to raise prices of Macs and iPads. Apple has so far spared its signature product, with Wall Street analysts increasingly expecting that Apple will hike iPhone prices around its annual fall launch event in September.In an interview with Reuters, Apple CEO Tim Cook said that the main supply constraint that Apple had during the t...