Apple posts 20pc revenue boost to $62.9bn for Q4

The vendor sold 46 million iPhones, 9.69 million iPads and 5.29 million Mac computers in the quarter

Apple announced it has taken $62.9bn (£48.2bn) in revenue for Q4 2018, an increase of 20 per cent ($52.5m) year-on-year.

Over half of the figure ($37.1bn) was driven by iPhone sales with over 46 million handsets sold. In the quarter the American vendor released the ipHone XS, XS Max and XR.

Services such as Apple Care, Apple Pay and Apple Music generated $9.9 billion.

Around 9.69 million iPads and 5.29 million Mac computers were shipped in the quarter raking in $4 billion and $7.4 billion respectively. The company reported an average selling price of $793 â€” a year-over-year increase of 28 percent.

Q1 predictions

Apple posted the following forecast for Q1 2019.

Revenue between $89 billion and $93 billion
Gross margin between 38 percent and 38.5 percent
Operating expenses between $8.7 billion and $8.8 billion
Other income/(expense) of $300 million

Apple CEO Tim Cook said: “We’re thrilled to report another record-breaking quarter that caps a tremendous fiscal 2018, the year in which we shipped our 2 billionth iOS device, celebrated the 10th anniversary of the App Store and achieved the strongest revenue and earnings in Apple’s history.

Apple CFO Luca Maestri added: “We concluded a record year with our best September quarter ever, growing double digits in every geographic segment. We set September quarter revenue records for iPhone and Wearables and all-time quarterly records for Services and Mac.

“We generated $19.5 billion in operating cash flow and returned over $23 billion to shareholders in dividends and share repurchases in the September quarter, bringing total capital returned in fiscal 2018 to almost $90 billion.”