Apple reports record quarterly revenue, profit jumps 19 percent amid CEO transition

Apple’s latest quarter delivered a blunt answer to Wall Street’s obsession with its next act: the iPhone is still doing most of the heavy lifting. The Cupertino company said fiscal 2026 second-quarter revenue rose 17 percent from a year earlier to $111.2 billion, while diluted earnings per share climbed 22 percent to $2.01, both records for the March quarter ended March 28.

Apple said the period set all-time highs for total company revenue, iPhone revenue and earnings per share, and that services revenue also reached a new record. Those numbers matter because they show Apple can still generate growth across its largest profit engines even as the company prepares for a leadership transition that will move Tim Cook into the role of executive chairman and elevate John Ternus to chief executive on September 1.

The results strengthen Apple’s argument that it is entering the handoff from a position of financial strength. Just two weeks earlier, Apple announced the board-approved succession plan, a change that follows years of internal preparation rather than a sudden departure. For investors, the more pressing question is whether the company’s record-setting quarter reflects durable momentum or the peak of an iPhone cycle that will be harder to repeat.

That tension has defined Apple’s recent performance. In its fiscal first quarter, the company reported revenue of $143.8 billion and diluted earnings per share of $2.84, both up sharply from a year earlier and also records for that period. Together, the two quarters suggest Apple has sustained unusually strong demand across back-to-back reporting cycles, even as the broader technology sector has searched for a new growth engine beyond smartphones.

The March-quarter figures leave little doubt that Apple remains a consumer hardware giant first and a services business second, even as services continues to expand. The company’s ability to post record iPhone revenue alongside a new high in services gives it a rare mix of hardware scale and recurring revenue. But the strategic question remains unchanged: once the current run of strong device sales fades, where does the next leg of growth come from?

That question will hang over Ternus as he prepares to take over from Cook, whose tenure reshaped Apple into the world’s most valuable consumer technology company. For now, the numbers show a company still anchored by the iPhone, still capable of producing outsized profits, and still facing the same pressure to prove that its next era can be more than an extension of the last.