Jason Snell, at Six Colors:
On Thursday, Apple reported its third-quarter 2025 fiscal
results. Revenue was $94 billion (a fiscal third-quarter
record), up 10% versus the year-ago quarter. Mac revenue was up
15%, iPhone revenue up 13%, and Services revenue up 13%. The
Wearables/Home/Accessories category was down 9% and iPad revenue
down 8%.
See also: the transcript of the analyst call, and a column Snell wrote on the results and call.
Two notes from the analyst call and prepared remarks. First, Apple did, for the first time, acknowledge the risk that Judge Amit Mehta, when he issues his remedies in the US v. Google case, might ban Google from making traffic acquisition cost payments, which would cut off at least $20 billion per year in Apple’s revenue. But while Apple is acknowledging there’s a risk, they’re not giving any hint what they plan to do if that happens. From the call:
Wamsi Mohan, Bank of America: Hi, yes, thank you so much. Tim,
I know you said similar growth in Services and that’s predicated
with Google payments continuing. Is there any way for us to
dimensionalize or maybe just conceptually talk about maybe options
if the counter were to happen, if the payments were not allowed in
some way? What are some of the things that Apple could do given
that it is a significant chunk of profitability?Tim Cook: Yeah, Wamsi, I don’t really want to speculate on the
court ruling and how they would rule and what we would do as a
consequence of it.Wamsi Mohan, Bank of America: OK, I guess we’ll wait for that
ruling to come out.
Yes, I guess we will.
Similarly, on AI strategy and which aspects Apple sees as commodities and which it deems as essential and proprietary:
Krish Sankar, TD Cowen: Tim, I’m curious about your thoughts
on AI for edge devices. You know, there’s like some people who
think that LLM could be a commodity in the future. Do you see a
scenario where LLMs become a core part of your iOS, or is the SLM
the way to go, and how to think about evolution of edge devices in
a futuristic AI world, and is smartphone going to be the choice of
device? I’m curious your thoughts on it, broadly speaking.Tim Cook: The way that we look at AI is that it’s one of the
most profound technologies of our lifetime, and I think it will
affect all devices in a significant way. What pieces of the chain
are commoditized and not commoditized, I wouldn’t want to really
talk about today because that gives away some things on our
strategy, but I think it’s a good question.
These quarterly calls are better than nothing, but when it comes to anything not in their prepared statements, Apple seldom reveals anything at all.
