HN Reader

Kind of telling that

1, the iPhone outsells every other category by 5-7x ratio, and the Mac (which includes everything from Macbooks to Mac Minis to iMacs) barely sells more than the iPad.

2, Services (iCloud, apps, music, TV shows etc.) now bigger than every other category, except the iPhone, combined

Basically 76% of the sales are iPhones and Services

(millions)

iPhone $209,586

Mac $33,708

iPad $28,023

Wearables, Home and Accessories $35,686

Services $109,158

Total $416,161

Next 5 years or so (or even less) both the iPad and the Wearables, Home and Accessories category will overtake the sales of Macs.

Personal take :

The iPhone and services that go with the iPhone (music apps iCloud) together make apple what it is even today. The numbers are huge and the iPhone 17 and 17 Pro are still the gold standard of smartphones. Everything else is probably secondary support hardware and software for the iPhone.

I plan on moving away from macOS (maybe Asahi on my old M1 Air but leaning towards Arch on framework) but every attempt to reconsider the iPhone for me has failed.

The biggest thing I see is how the iPhone helped fuel social media and in turn social media helped iPhone with sales. The phone is a social and secure device and the iPhone excels at that thanks to iCloud services and the ease with which you can manage the phone. Upgrading is so seamless, managing Photos with iCloud is a no-brainer. Everything about it screams social and it does it extremely well.

The personal computer vs Mac war is still ongoing but android vs iPhone war was over years ago. The iPhone won and there is not much anyone can do at this point to compete at that scale unless someone comes up with something truly extraordinary rather than just putting LLMs inside apps.

Declining Mac sales aren’t concerning because Macs are high quality. People can skip generations and use their M1s for years.

This stuck out like a sore thumb to me:

Q4 2024: Income before provision for income taxes $29.610 billion, Provision for income taxes $14.874 billion

Q4 2025: Income before provision for income taxes $32.804 billion, Provision for income taxes $5.338 billion

[EDIT:] The 2024 taxes were actually an aberration.

"the one-time charge recognized during the fourth quarter of 2024 related to the impact of the reversal of the European General Court’s State Aid decision" https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2024/10/apple-reports-fourth-...

Why is AAPL still one stock?

All these companies depend on TSMC for their life.

How come they don’t add AI?

Interesting that Google and Apple matched their quarterly earnings in revenue .

Apple could substantially eat into Nvidia’s AI lunch if they really tried, honestly Macs are fast enough… my guess is by the time M6 is coming out they will have external GPUs available for both the data centre and home use. If I was them I’d already be taking orders, power requirements alone even if they aren’t as fast 2 nodes ahead would make their offering sensational.

No wonder they treat the Mac like a third-class citizen. Mac sales barely pay their tax bill.