The 6 Most Insane Stats From Apple’s Blowout Earnings

Image via Flickr/ Christopher Aloi

Apple released its earnings numbers for the three months through the end of last year on Tuesday afternoon, and took the market by storm. The company had an incredible quarter, and investors sent the firm’s shares surging toward record highs. Here’s a look at the six most insane numbers driving new confidence in Cupertino today.

$74.6 Billion In Sales

There’s no point in even trying to imagine that. Apple sold products worth close to $75 billion in three months. The company has never before sold close to that much, with the Christmas period last year bringing in less than $60 billion in sales.

$18.04 Billion In Profit

Also bafflingly difficult to grasp as an idea, this is the actual profit that Apple made in three months. To put it in clear context, this is enough money to buy almost 25 million iPhone 6 Pluses from the Apple website — carrier free, of course.

74.5 Million iPhones Sold

This is the amount that Apple actually sold during the three months. It’s close to the number of Xbox 360s that were sold during that product’s entire time on the shelf, and well ahead of the sales of the Nintendo Entertainment System, a pop culture icon.

1 billion iOS Devices Sold

Since the launch of the original iPhone seven years ago, Apple has managed to sell more than 1 billion iOS devices. This includes iPhones, iPads and the iPod touch, adding up to an average of 142 million devices per year. That number is still accelerating, according to those iPhone sales, so the company is likely to hit 2 billion a whole lot quicker, especially with the Apple Watch on the horizon.

$16.1 Billion Chinese Sales

Apple sold $16.1 billion worth of goods in China. It’s likely the most business any Western company has ever done in China in such a short period and it means a huge amount for the company, the country and the world in general. This means that Western goods can be successfully sold in China despite the country’s perceived antipathy toward American Capitalism.

China is a massively growing market, and one that Apple has been talking about exploiting for years. With the relative flub of the iPhone 5c in the past, it’s clear that the company is taking its role in the country more seriously and performing more effectively.

39.9 Percent Gross Margin

Here’s the real kicker. Many thought that Apple’s gross margin would decrease as a result of expensive new components, like the fingerprint reader and larger screen, included in the most recent iPhone. Not so, apparently. The iPhone is actually getting relatively less expensive to make.

That’s just about it for Apple numbers, but if the above facts don’t blow you away, here’s a couple of bonus figures. Apple is now sitting on $142 billion in cash reserves. That sum, in $100 bills, would weigh 1.288 tons and stand 88 miles high. That you can take to the bank.

Disclosure: Author represents that he has no position in any stocks mentioned in this article at the time this article was submitted