The Most Profitable Quarter of Any Company Ever
[Via Daring Fireball]
Greg Kumparak, writing for TechCrunch:
This page charts the past record holders. Until today, Russia’s Gazprom (the largest natural gas extractor in the world) held the record at $16.2 billion in a quarter.
Apple now holds the record: $18.04 billion in profit, fiscal Q1 of 2015.
Absolutely. Insane.
For reference, that means Apple makes around $8.3 million dollars per hour in profit (24 hours a day).
Of the current Top 20 record holding earners, 15 are Oil/Gas producers — primarily ExxonMobil and Shell. The other five are all Apple, over various quarters.
Who knows how long Apple’s ride at the top will last, but this is a moment worth savoring. A toast to the value of good design.
[More]
And Apple would have made almost $4 billion more except for currency fluctuations. The strong dollar meant that Apple made $4 billion less in the last quarter.
That $4 billion is larger than Google’s entire profit last quarter. Yes, “Apple lost more money to currency fluctuations than Google makes in a quarter.”
