Apple’s (NASDAQ: AAPL) flagship iPhone business was nothing less than stellar in its recently reported fiscal third quarter.
Revenue of $54.25 billion was not only up nearly 22% but also topped analysts’ expectations of $53.86 billion
The iPhone also led a companywide beat of Q3 earnings and sales outlooks, offsetting its services arm’s revenue shortfall. Apple’s iPhone franchise, however, may be even more of a workhorse than Apple’s limited data disclosure about the popular smartphone suggests. Leading the unit growth race Apple stopped reporting the total number of iPhones it sold in any given quarter back in 2019, reducing transparency into the health of about half of the company’s revenue.
But the technology industry’s researchers and data intermediaries didn’t stop keeping score. Using information gathered in other ways, IDC continued to tally the total number of smartphones that the business’s biggest players shipped. To this day, it continues to provide quarterly unit shipments for major smartphone manufacturers.