Tough compare? Four lessons from Apple's latest record quarter

We all saw it coming. Despite a global pandemic and economic and political unrest, the indefatigable Apple money machine would continue to chug away. Traditionally, the last three months of the calendar year are Apple’s best, and Apple’s been on an upswing in recent quarters. If you placed a bet that the company’s first financial quarter of 2021 (covering the holiday season of 2020) would be an all-time record—well, you would’ve won, but only a sucker would’ve taken the bet.

All product categories and regions were up. It was a veritable downpour of up arrows. And yet, amid Apple CEO Tim Cook’s continued embarrassment that Apple continues to generate enormous sales and profits at a time when so much of the world is in turmoil, there were (as there almost always are!) also some interesting things we can glean about Apple’s business left amid the financial disclosures and coy asides to financial analysts. Here are a few of them.

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