14 DAY TRIAL // The first quarter of Apple’s financial year 2020 is one that Cupertino executives won’t forget too soon. This particular quarter witnessed Apple not only posting an all-time quarterly record thanks to $91.8 billion revenue (up 9% year over year) but also beating Microsoft’s historic milestone of 1.5 billion global active devices.
Apple announced during the earnings report that the company’s active device fleet exceeded 1.5 billion units after a record quarter.
“During the holiday quarter our active installed base of devices grew in each of our geographic segments and has now reached over 1.5 billion. We see this as a powerful testament to the satisfaction, engagement and loyalty of our customers — and a great driver of our growth across the board,” Apple said.
1.5 billion devices
Microsoft has long bragged about having 1.5 billion devices used by customers worldwide, and while this figure only represents PCs running Windows, it just shows how important it is to have an always-growing device portfolio that can push a business closer to breaking more records.
While in terms of hardware Apple’s growth is driven by iPhone, iPad, and Mac, Microsoft is only betting big on PCs, as the company abandoned the mobile device market and decided to adopt a mobile strategy that focuses more on apps and services.
This appears to work for Microsoft, as the Redmond-based software giant is now a $1 trillion company as well, just like Apple.
In fact, Apple selling more iPhones is god news for Microsoft as well. Given its focus on mobile apps and services, Microsoft needs Android phones and iPhones to be in the hands of as many people as possible, as the faster it happens, the bigger the chances for its apps to be installed by a growing number of users.
Apple says the iPhone alone accounted for $55.9 billion of the company’s revenue during the quarter, up from $51.9 billion the previous year.