iPhone sales and Apple Services revenue were the headliners in the tech giant’s most recent quarter, but the Mac quietly outperformed — helped by growing demand for AI workloads.
Wall Street investors had expected to see Mac revenue in the low $8 billion range, but Apple was mentioned $8.4 billion in the second quarter ended March 28 — a remarkable success for a non-core part of the tech giant’s business. Additionally, ahead of earnings, investors believed Mac sales would be substantial flat from year to year. In contrast, Mac sales rose 6% year over year, the company told investors. The company’s total revenue was $111.2 billion, an increase of 17% from the same period last year.
Apple has outsourced some of its Mac development to recent product releases, including the wildly successful MacBook Neo. However, these fun, colorful computers were only on sale for a few weeks after pre-orders began on March 4th. Realistically, most units shipped in mid to late March and some demand may have been pushed into April as some models sold out.
Apple CEO Tim Cook told analysts on the company’s second-quarter earnings conference call Thursday that customer demand for the Neo was “off the charts” and higher than Apple expected. He also noted that Apple set a record quarter for new Mac customers, in part because of the Neo.
Cook attributed the increase in Mac sales to the use of the platform to run local AI models such as OpenClaw – something that somewhat surprised Apple as Mac mini and Mac Studio devices sold out in recent weeks.
“Both of these are amazing platforms for AI and dealer tools, and customer recognition is happening faster than we anticipated, so we’ve seen stronger-than-expected demand,” Cook said of those Mac sales. He also noted that the Mac mini was the best-selling desktop computer in China – a market that is was in an OpenClaw frenzy as of late.
However, Mac revenue was flat quarter-on-quarter, suggesting that this new demand has yet to scale. Cook said it could take “a few months” for Apple to balance supply and demand for the Mac mini and Studio models.
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“We’re not at the point where we’re saying that [constraint] it’s going to end soon. And it’s not because of a problem, per se, other than we just underestimated the demand,” Cook explained.
Business demand for the Mac was also at play. Apple pointed to some larger companies, including Perplexity, that had turned to the Mac as their preferred platform for building AI assistants for businesses.
He also said that Apple is “limited in supply of the MacBook Neo” and has even seen school systems, such as Kansas City Public Schools, abandon Chromebooks for the Neo.
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