Apple’s Q1 results weren’t exactly surprising, but they were impressive nonetheless. The technology behemoth reported a record quarterly revenue of $74.6bn back in January 2015. It’s hoping to build on this with the highly-anticipated Apple Watch, which has had a mixed response so far – particularly regarding Apple’s new launch method. Senior vice president of retail, Angela Ahrendts, admitted that retail employees were being “bombarded with questions” about the Apple Watch’s availability. There was a preorder system and customers could try the Watch on in-store but couldn’t take it home.
Nevertheless, the interest has been high – selling out within minutes, suggesting Apple may be on track for another impressive quarter. The most recent results reflected the ongoing popularity of the iPhone, and last summer, Slate decided to investigate just how impressive Apple’s product lines would be if presented as individual companies. It stacked them up against other corporations, using their most recent public results.
“If Apple Products Were Their Own Companies, They’d Be as Big as…” via http://t.co/voHKvcd7hk via @Slate pic.twitter.com/ATB7N9sOng
— Bex Smith (@BexKSmith) April 22, 2015
Using the stats from 2014, Slate discovered that the iPhone would do pretty well against McDonald’s, and Coca-Cola too. In fact, it had more revenue than the two combined. Apple sold 35.2m iPhones for Q3 2014, with $19.75bn in sales. Slate also claimed that this is larger than Amazon, while Google needed eBay to help it out in surpassing the mighty iPhone.
If we look ahead to Q1, the gap between Apple and other companies becomes even more pronounced. Apple sold 74.5m iPhones for the first quarter of 2015, and made $51.2bn, accounting for 68.6 per cent of the company’s revenue for Q1. Yahoo’s entire market capitalisation of $45.5bn can’t quite make up the total figure, while the iPhone revenue was also twice that of Microsoft’s $26.47bn for the last quarter. Google at $16.52bn and Intel at $14.72bn would also be left in the shadow of an iPhone company.
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Slate’s original graph also takes into account the iPad, which may be a less sought-after product, but still came up strongly as an individual company – for Q3 of 2014 it sold 13.3m units, and generated $5.9bn – more than Facebook, Twitter, Yahoo and others combined. Again, updating this to Q1 2015 – even with iPad sales slowing – it still totalled 21.4m units with a revenue of $8.985bn.
The question we’re left with, is how will the Apple Watch compare?
Image: Shutterstock
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