Apple Q3 Results Beat Street View On IPhone Sales

(RTTNews) - California-based tech giant Apple Inc (AAPL), Tuesday reported strong results for the third-quarter driven largely by the success of the iPhone. Both earnings and revenue managed to beat analysts' estimates.

Apple said its third-quarter profit surged to $21.74 billion or $1.30 per share from $11.25 billion or $0.65 per share last year. Twenty-eight analysts polled by Thomson Reuters predicted earnings of $1.00 per share for the quarter.

Third-quarter revenues rose to $81.43 billion from $59.68 billion last year. Twenty-five analysts estimated revenues of $72.93 billion for the quarter.

The revenue was primarily driven by an increase in the sales of iPhones year-over-year. Apple, for the first time, launched a line-up of four iPhone variants with their iPhone 12 followed by the iPhone SE 2 in latter months. Sales of iPhones was $39.57 billion, compared to $26.41 billion last year. Apple's cloud services also increased to $17.48 billion from $13.15 billion year-over-year.

While sales increased in the US and Europe, the $5.44 billion jump to $14.76 billion from $9.32 billion in Greater China has propelled the figures.

CFO of Apple, Luca Maestri said, "We generated $21 billion of operating cash flow. returned nearly $29 billion to our shareholders during the quarter, and continued to make significant investments across our business to support our long-term growth plans."

The shares are currently trading $143.49, down $3.28 or 2.23%. The shares closed regular trading at $146.77, down $2.22 or 1.49%.