Apple’s September-quarter report shows strong iPhone and Mac sales, a Services record, and a margin benefit from tariff refunds.
Apple reported fiscal fourth-quarter revenue of $114.5 billion on November 2, up 12% from a year earlier, and diluted earnings of $2.10 per share, up 14%. The results give investors a fresh view of the company’s performance as it heads into the holiday selling season under CEO John Ternus.
File photo: An Apple Store in San Francisco, photographed in July 2012. Photo: Flickr user Butz.2013 (cropped). Source photograph · CC BY 2.0.
The company’s earnings release covers the quarter ended September 26, 2026. That reporting window matters: this is Apple’s fiscal fourth quarter, rather than a report on the October-to-December holiday period.
The product mix behind the headline
Apple’s consolidated financial statements show iPhone revenue of $57.583 billion, compared with $49.025 billion a year earlier. Calculated from those figures, that is growth of roughly 17.5%.
Mac revenue increased to $10.792 billion from $8.726 billion. Services generated $31.573 billion, up from $28.750 billion. Together, those figures show why the company-wide growth rate tells only part of the story: different parts of Apple’s business are growing at different speeds.
Two categories moved in the other direction. iPad revenue fell to $6.229 billion from $6.952 billion, while Wearables, Home and Accessories declined to $8.300 billion from $9.013 billion. A record overall quarter therefore did not mean that every hardware category expanded.
For readers comparing successive reports, the useful approach is to compare each category with the same period a year earlier. Comparing a September quarter with a holiday quarter can confuse seasonal demand with an underlying change in the business.
Tariff refunds helped reported profitability
Apple reported a company gross margin of 47.9%, including a favorable impact of approximately one percentage point from tariff refunds. Diluted earnings per share also included a five-cent benefit from those refunds.
Those disclosures provide important context for the reported profit growth. As the SEC’s financial-statement guide explains, sales and profit are separate measures: gross profit subtracts the costs of sales from revenue. A temporary cost benefit can improve profitability without representing an equivalent change in customer demand.
Apple said full-year revenue reached approximately $479 billion. The quarterly and annual figures describe different reporting periods and should be kept separate when comparing the release with previous headlines.
The next dates on the calendar
Apple’s board declared a cash dividend of $0.27 per common share, payable November 16 to shareholders of record at the close of business on November 12. The company also provided a webcast of its results discussion through its official earnings-call page.
The report’s central business question is now how the sales mix and underlying margins develop in the next quarter. Product-launch commentary can help explain management’s expectations, but it is separate from revenue already recorded in the September results.
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