Demand for Apple Products at ‘All-Time High,’ CEO Tim Cook Says

Photo by Justin Sullivan/Getty Images(NEW YORK) — Apple Inc. announced Tuesday that it beat Wall St. expectations by a huge margin, selling a record 74.5 million iPhones in the three months ending December 27. Apple stock rallied more than 5 percent in the aftermarket, after news of the company’s “highest-ever” revenue and earnings.

“We’d like to thank our customers for an incredible quarter, which saw demand for Apple products soar to an all-time high,” said Apple CEO Tim Cook said in a statement. “Our revenue grew 30 percent over last year to $74.6 billion, and the execution by our teams to achieve these results was simply phenomenal.”

At the close of trading in New York Tuesday, Apple stock had fallen 3.5 percent to $109.14 a share.

The company, based in Cupertino, California, reported net profit of $18 billion in its first quarter, compared with $13.1 billion in the same period last year. It reported revenue of $74.6 billion compared with $57.6 billion in the same period a year ago. International sales accounted for 65 percent of the quarter’s revenue.

In the last quarter, Apple sold:

– 74,468,000 iPhones

– 21,419,000 iPads

– 5,519,000 Macs

Now Apple’s iPhone business is bigger than Google and Microsoft’s phone businesses combined.

Earlier this month, Apple announced that the first week of January set a new record for billings from its App Store with customers spending nearly half a billion dollars on apps and in-app purchases.

New Year’s Day 2015 was the single biggest day in App Store sales history, the company said. App Store developers have earned $25 billion from the sale of apps and games, the company said on Jan. 8.

World News Videos | ABC World News

Follow @ABCNewsRadio
Copyright © 2015, ABC Radio. All rights reserved.