Apple’s Q1 by the Numbers

Jason Snell’s usual roundup of charts illustrating Apple’s quarterly results. One thing that sticks out is that while Mac sales were up year-over-year, they were down slightly (4%) from the July–September quarter, which, on the surface, makes no sense. How could Mac sales go down during the quarter when Apple launched the M1 Macs — Macs that were universally acclaimed and which many users were waiting for?

The answer, seemingly, is that Macs were supply-constrained during the quarter. Apple couldn’t make them fast enough. (That’s a link to a tweet from the excellent MacJournals, who also observed that, adjusted for splits, AAPL shares 20 years ago were $0.30 per share.)

Update: Neil Cybart points out that the July–September quarter is always big for the Mac because it’s back-to-school season. That’s true — a glance at Snell’s chart shows that the Mac’s annual cycle has big quarters in July-September (back to school) and October-December (holiday). But most years the holiday quarter ekes ahead as the biggest of the year. It’s clear that the COVID pandemic, with students of all ages around the world preparing for school-at-home, resulted in an unusually large back-to-school boost for Mac sales.

★ Thursday, 28 January 2021