Apple Inc. posted its largest-ever quarterly revenue today, blowing past Wall Street forecasts to top the $100 billion mark for the first time.

The iPhone maker reported a fiscal first-quarter profit before certain costs such as stock compensation of $1.68 per share on revenue of $111.4 billion, up 21% from the same year before. Wall Street had projected a profit of just $1.42 per share on sales of $103.27 billion.

Apple said that it expects to see sales and growth accelerate even more during the current quarter. Yet despite all the positive news, its stock still slipped about 3% lower in after-hours trading.

Apple Chief Executive Tim Cook (pictured) in a statement attributed the strong results partly to the “unmatched line of cutting-edge products” the company delivered at the end of last year.

In a conference call with analysts, Cook said Apple’s iPhone installed base has grown to more than 1.65 billion users globally. It was the first time Apple has reported earnings since its new iPhone 12 series of devices went on sale in October. The four new iPhone models are the first to feature 5G connectivity, which some analysts have said could tempt many customers to upgrade their handsets. Cook added that Apple saw a record number of device activations in the last week of the quarter.

Apple stopped reporting quarterly iPhone unit sales last year, but the company said iPhone revenue for the quarter came to $65.6 billion, topping expectations on $60 billion.

“Apple keeps pushing the boundaries of corporate achievement,” Pund-IT Inc. analyst Charles King told SiliconANGLE. “The company is obviously firing on all cylinders, with the new iPhone 12 leading the way.”

But it wasn’t just iPhone sales that performed well. In fact, sales rose by double-digits in every product category, with Mac revenue rising 21%, to $8.68 billion, and iPad revenue jumping 41%, to $8.44 billion.

Apple Chief Financial Officer Luca Maestri said the double-digit growth in each product category helped the company to “generate record operating cash flow of $38.8 billion” in the quarter.

Besides the new iPhones, Apple launched products such as the new iPad Air, several new Mac computers with its newest M1 chip and its AirPods Max headphones during the quarter. The “Other products” category, which includes the AirPods Max, Apple Watch and Beats headphones, saw sales rise 29% to $12.97 billion. Services were up too, with revenue rising 24%, to $15.76 billion.

“The healthy growth across Apple’s other business units demonstrates that past concerns about the company being a one-trick pony are becoming increasingly irrelevant,” King said.

Still, it will be some time before Apple can shrug off that “one-trick pony” tag. Holger Mueller, an analyst with Constellation Research Inc., said that despite the strong performance elsewhere in its business, Apple is still seen as “the iPhone company” in many people’s eyes, and that its bottom line is still exposed to the ups and downs of the iPhone cycle.

“With iPhone revenue growing $10 billion versus services revenue only growing at $2 billion, Apple still has a long way to go if it’s to create an anti-cyclical secondary revenue stream,” Mueller said.

Apple said that its sales grew across all geographies. Notably, revenue was up 57% in China, accounting for 19% of its total.

King said Apple’s performance in China was especially good given the ongoing tensions with the U.S. government.

“Apple stayed on its feet and executed brilliantly,” he added. “If tensions between the U.S. and China ease, Apple is likely positioned to do very well indeed.”

Maestri said that because of the uncertainty surrounding the COVID-19 pandemic, the company would not be offering a specific revenue forecast for the current quarter. However he did provide some “directional insights,” saying the company believes growth will continue to accelerate on a year-over-year basis and in aggregate.

Photo: iPhonedigital/Flickr