ROUNDUP: Apple posts $25 billion quarterly profit

CUPERTINO (dpa-AFX) – Apple defies the global problems in the electronics industry with another mega quarter. The iPhone group increased sales year-on-year by nine percent to $97.3 billion ($92.5 billion). The bottom line was a profit of 25 billion dollars in the corporate coffers. That was almost six percent more than a year earlier.

The growth in the service area was particularly strong, in which the business with storage services, the app platform, but also music and video streaming is bundled. The division’s sales grew by a good 17 percent to $19.8 billion.

When Apple’s most important product, the iPhone, the proceeds increased by 5.4 percent to almost 50.6 billion dollars. The group was also pleased with the Mac computers with a sales increase of 14.6 percent to a good 10.4 billion dollars. In contrast, the global PC market shrank by around five percent in the quarter, according to calculations by the analysis company IDC. The electronics industry as a whole has to contend with chip bottlenecks and other problems in the supply chain.

Apple clearly exceeded the expectations of analysts, including in group sales and in the iPhone and Mac business. The share buyback program is now being expanded by an additional $90 billion. The Apple share price turned negative in after-hours trading after initial increases and temporarily fell by around 1.3 percent./so/DP/he