Apple Q1 Sales Surge 17% to $111bn as iPhone 17 Breaks Launch Records

Overall, sales of Apple products grew 17% to $111bn (£81bn) in the first three months of the year, compared to the same quarter a year ago, the company said in financial results released Thursday. Sales in China were up by 28% compared to a year ago. Tim Cook, Apple's outgoing chief executive, said that recent demand for the iPhone had been "extraordinary", making the iPhone 17 the "most popular launch in [Apple's] history." However, Cook told financial analysts on a call to discuss the company's performance that the new Macbook Neo was seeing "off the charts" demand. He said the quarter set a record for new Mac buyers thanks to the Neo, which is sold at a significantly lower price than other Mac laptop computers. Beyond current products, Cook said Apple Intelligence, the company's artificial intelligence (AI) product, will be updated later this year, and included as part of its Siri voice-assistant. "This is not AI as a standalone feature, but AI as an essential and intuitive part of our devices," Cook said. He added that Apple's angle on AI is to be "respectful of user privacy", something that he said made it clear why Apple platforms were "the best places to experience AI". Instead of pouring hundreds of billions of dollars into a race to build its own AI model, the company has chosen to partner with companies like OpenAI and Google to weave in their AI technology to power some Apple features. While some have criticised Apple as a late-mover on this wave of AI technology, the company is far less exposed to potential losses if the huge expectations of AI are not realised. Given Cook's imminent move from chief executive to chairman role, he took a moment to praise John Ternus, the longtime Apple hardware executive who will become the next Apple boss on 1 Sept. "I know he will push us to go further than we think is possible in order to deliver products for our users," Cook said. Ternus spoke briefly for the first time to financial analysts on the call, saying that he plans to keep up Cook's habit of financial "discipline" and alluded to future product roll-outs. "We have an incredible roadmap ahead…suffice it to say this is the most exciting time in my career at Apple to be building products and services," Ternus said. During a call with financial analysts, Reddit's chief executive Ladd Huffman, noted that 200 million people in the US, more than half of the country's population, visits Reddit every week. The goal, however, is to get that many people in the US visiting the site every day. Reddit also aims to see one billion people around the world on the site each day. Reddit has also become a key source of training data for AI companies that "scrape" or harvest material from internet pages so that the data can help train AI chatbots and tools. Huffman said Reddit's current deals with OpenAI and Google, charging them to use conversations on Reddit for their AI models, is valuable. But he said venues like Reddit, where people converse on a range of topics would become even more important, the more the rest of the internet became "optimised for AI".