The Cupertino giant announced a record-breaking September quarter today, revealing both iPhone sales and overall sales grew 6 percent.
The results come three days after the rollout of iOS 18.1, which officially brings the first set of Apple Intelligence features to owners of compatible iPhones (iPhone 16 family and iPhone 15 Pro duo).
Cook implicitly shot down reports that the iPhone 16 is struggling, revealing it’s doing better than the iPhone 15, which is performing better than the iPhone 14 did in the year-ago quarter.
The iPhone 16 was released on September 20, so Apple’s fiscal fourth quarter report only included ten days of the new phone’s sales. Still, it’s our first official insight into how the new phones are doing. Most reports so far have hinted at a tepid response, with one even claiming that Apple has cut back on production.
Cook revealed that early feedback from customers and developers on Apple Intelligence is promising and according to stats compiled in the three days since iOS 18.1 was released, people are downloading it at twice the rate of iOS 17.1 during a comparable period last year.
We’re getting great feedback from customers and developers already and a really early stat, which is only three days worth of data: Users are adopting iOS 18.1 at twice the rate that they adopted 17.1 in the year-ago quarter.
Tim Cook, Apple CEO, October 2024
More exciting features are expected to drop in December and March.
The iPhone-maker is counting on AI to drive iPhone 16 upgrades and if Apple Intelligence is prompting iPhone owners to download iOS 18.1, it may transform the iPhone 16 into a sleeper hit. Apple Intelligence was previously available in beta, but with the public release, more people will get to play with the features, and this can spur word-of-mouth marketing.
The iPhone is Apple’s bread and butter and accounts for 49 percent of sales.
