What Apple keeps
Apple took in $416 billion in its 2025 financial year and kept $112 billion of it. Here is the trip between the two.
Straight from the 10-K for the year to 27 September 2025.
In: iPhone $209.6bn, services $109.2bn, Mac and iPad $61.7bn, wearables and home $35.7bn.
Out:
Revenue $416.2bn less cost of sales $221.0bn = gross profit $195.2bn less research $34.6bn less selling and admin $27.6bn less tax and other $21.0bn = net profit $112.0bn
Two things worth sitting with.
Making the things costs more than everything else combined. $221bn of that $416bn is the chips, screens, assembly and the cost of running the services. Apple is famous for its margin and it still spends 53 cents of every dollar before a single engineer or salesperson is paid.
And research is the bigger of the two middle bars. $34.6bn on R&D against $27.6bn on selling and admin - about $1.25 of inventing for every $1 of selling. Most large drugmakers run that ratio the other way round.
The fourth red bar is $20.7bn of income tax plus $321m of other expense. It is smaller than last year's, and the reason is that the 2024 accounts carried a one-off charge from the European Commission's state aid case, which is gone this year.
One caveat on the widths: selling and admin is one line covering sales teams, marketing, legal, finance and head office - it is not all advertising.
Next week: who actually owns the chip factories that make all of this.
