Apple shares surge 6 per cent as profits and sales rise

Sales boost by apps and music

Apple has seen ‘accelerating growth’ in the third quarter of 2017 mainly thanks to service revenue, the company announced last night.

The Company posted quarterly revenue of $45.4bn up seven per cent year on year, international sales accounted for 61 percent of the quarter’s revenue.

Service revenue, which includes Apple Pay, Apple music and the App Store, jumped 22 per cent.

The tech giant sold 41m iPhones during the quarter and 11.4m iPads, a 15 per cent increase on the same period last year.

Quarterly also profit rose by 12 per cent to $8.7bn and the reports sent stocks surging six per cent in after-hours trading.

“With revenue up seven per cent year-over-year, we’re happy to report our third consecutive quarter of accelerating growth and an all-time quarterly record for Services revenue,” said Tim Cook, Apple’s CEO. “

We hosted an incredibly successful Worldwide Developers Conference in June, and we’re very excited about the advances in iOS, macOS, watchOS and tvOS coming this fall.”

“We reported unit and revenue growth in all our product categories in the June quarter, driving 17 percent growth in earnings per share,” said Luca Maestri, Apple’s CFO.

“We also returned $11.7bn to investors during the quarter, bringing cumulative capital returns under our program to almost $223bn.”

The new iPhone 8 and 7s models are expected to be released next month and there has been much speculation around the launch.

Apple also released forecasts for revenue for the fourth quarter, when the new iPhones is expected to be released, which showed a range of between $49bn and $52bn.