I keep clicking buy on Apple (NASDAQ:AAPL | AAPL Price Prediction), and the hardware bears keep giving me reasons to do it again. Every quarter someone declares the iPhone cycle exhausted. Every quarter Apple hands me another record and I add to the position.
The conviction is simple. Apple sells hardware that a 2.5 billion active device installed base refuses to abandon, then rents that same base a growing bundle of high-margin services. Bears keep pricing this as a maturing phone company. I keep pricing it as a compounding annuity with a chip designer attached.
The Receipts I Keep Coming Back To
Start with the hardware. In the March quarter, iPhone revenue hit $56.994 billion, a March record, with Tim Cook citing 22% year over year growth and 99% US customer satisfaction on the iPhone 17 family. Total revenue came in at $111.184 billion, up 16.6% year over year, with double-digit growth in every geographic segment. Demand like that speaks for itself.
Then Services. Revenue reached $30.976 billion at a 76.7% gross margin. That mix keeps expanding, and it keeps decoupling Apple’s earnings from any single phone launch. EPS of $2.01 beat the $1.9404 estimate, making it 8 consecutive quarters of beats.
The third leg is the capital return machine. The board authorized a fresh $100 billion buyback and lifted the dividend 4% to $0.27. Full fiscal year 2025 buybacks totaled $90.71 billion. On that shrinking share count, Apple posts 171.4% return on equity and 53.3% ROIC. Every dollar retained earns a return most companies cannot touch.
Why Not the Obvious AI Alternative
The name a tech-focused reader reaches for first these days is NVIDIA (NASDAQ:NVDA). I own some, and I keep sending fresh cash to Apple anyway. One AI-focused podcast framed the setup plainly: “the market is actually in a way saying we want to pay less for Nvidia than a company like Apple that is very growth constrained” because with Apple “you know what you’re getting.” The hyperscalers are pouring capex into AI infrastructure with uncertain payback windows. Apple is spending on R&D at an accelerating rate, per Cook, while still returning tens of billions to me each quarter. Predictability at this scale is rare, and I will pay for it.
The Risk I Am Not Ignoring
Greater China is the concern I sit with. The region softened to $14.49 billion in Q4 FY25 before recovering. The rebound has been fast: 33% growth in the first half of fiscal 2026 and a March record. Memory costs are climbing too, and Cook flagged a larger impact in the June quarter. Margins will feel it. The through-line still holds: an installed base compounding into a Services flywheel, backed by $62 billion in net cash. If you want to see how that Services momentum shows up in the numbers, our team pulled the receipts in 7 Stocks Powering the AI Boom (That Aren’t Chipmakers).
Why the Buy Button Stays Active
Shares are up 51.53% over the past year and 1,300.24% over ten years at $314.86. I keep buying because the machine that produced those returns is still running: hardware people upgrade, services people pay for monthly, and a treasury that keeps buying its own stock back. The hardware bears will keep filing their obituaries. I will keep filing my trade tickets.
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