Apple has announced its fourth-quarter results ending September 2014 citing a revenue of $42.1 billion and a net profit of $8.5 billion, a 13 per cent rise from last year’s results.
The company attributes the boost in earnings to the sales of their iPhone, Mac and App Store.
“Our fiscal 2014 was one for the record books, including the biggest iPhone launch ever with iPhone 6 and iPhone6 Plus,” said Tim Cook, Apple’s CEO.
“With amazing innovations in our new iPhones, iPads and Macs, as well as iOS 8, we are heading into the holidays with Apple’s strongest product line-up ever,” Cook said.
Sales of the company’s new iPhone 6 models stood at 39.3 million at the time of the announcement, with sales of the iPad disappointing at 12.3 million, which is down from the 13.1 million achieved a year earlier.
After the earnings were released, Apple shares rose to over 2%, with the board of directors at the company declaring a cash dividend of $47 per share of the company’s common stock payable to shareholders on November 13, 2014.
Apple also announced the introduction of its digital payment system, Apple Pay, which allows users to scan their fingerprint using an iPhone 6 or iPhone 6 Plus to access stored credit information to pay for goods at participating retailers.
The technology giant said the sales of its Mac laptops had hit a quarterly record, being especially notable given the state of the overall global PC market which had been failing.
Apple targets to report a revenue between $63.5 billion and $66.5 billion for its fiscal 2015 first quarter, with a gross margin of up to 38.5 per cent.
Last week the company announced its new version of the iPad Air 2, which it said was the thinnest device of its kind at 0.24-inches alongside the iPad Mini 3, an upgraded version of Apple’s smaller tablet.
