How much a stock's price changes over time is a significant driver for most investors. Not only can price performance impact your portfolio, but it can help you compare investment results across sectors and industries as well.
Another thing that can drive investing is the fear of missing out, or FOMO. This particularly applies to tech giants and popular consumer-facing stocks.
What if you'd invested in Apple (AAPL) ten years ago? It may not have been easy to hold on to AAPL for all that time, but if you did, how much would your investment be worth today?
Apple's Business In-Depth
With that in mind, let's take a look at Apple's main business drivers.
Apple’s business primarily runs around its flagship iPhone. The Services portfolio that includes revenues from cloud services, App store, Apple Music, AppleCare, Apple Pay, and licensing and other services now contributes a significant part of revenues.
The non-iPhone devices like Apple Watch and AirPods continue to gain traction. In fact, Apple dominates the Wearables and Hearables markets due to the growing adoption of Watch and AirPods. Solid uptake of Apple Watch has helped Apple strengthen its presence in the personal health monitoring space.
Apple is expanding its non-iPhone portfolio with the launch of Apple Vision Pro a spatial computer that blends digital content with the physical world.
Headquartered in Cupertino, CA, Apple also designs, manufactures and sells iPad, MacBook and HomePod. These devices are powered by software applications including iOS, macOS, watchOS and tvOS operating systems.
Apple’s other services include subscription-based Apple News+, Apple Card, Apple Arcade, the new Apple TV app, Apple TV channels and Apple TV+, a new subscription service.
In fiscal 2024, Apple generated $391.04 billion in total revenues. The company’s flagship device iPhone accounted for 51.4% of total revenues. The Services, Mac and iPad categories contributed 24.6%, 7.7% and 6.8%, respectively. The Wearables, Home and Accessories products category contributed 9.5%.
Apple primarily reports revenues on a geographic basis, namely the Americas (North & South America), Europe (European countries, India, Middle East and Africa), Greater China (China, Hong Kong & Taiwan), Japan and Rest of Asia Pacific (Australia & other Asian Countries).
In fiscal 2024, Americas, Europe, Greater China, Japan and Rest of Asia-Pacific accounted for 42.7%, 25.9%, 17.1%, 6.4% and 7.8% of total revenues, respectively.
Apple faces stiff competition from the likes of Samsung, Xiaomi, Oppo, Vivo, Google, Huawei and Motorola in the smartphone market. Lenovo, HP, Dell, Acer and Asus are its primary competitors in the PC market. Other notable competitors are Google & Amazon (smart speakers) and Fitbit & Xiaomi (wearables).
Bottom Line
Putting together a successful investment portfolio takes a combination of research, patience, and a little bit of risk. For Apple, if you bought shares a decade ago, you're likely feeling really good about your investment today.
A $1000 investment made in September 2015 would be worth $8,391.50, or a gain of 739.15%, as of September 18, 2025, according to our calculations. This return excludes dividends but includes price appreciation.
In comparison, the S&P 500's gained 231.64% and the price of gold went up 208.55% over the same time frame.
Analysts are anticipating more upside for AAPL.
Appleis benefiting from strong growth in Services revenues. AAPL now has more than 1 billion paid subscribers across its Services portfolio. Both paid accounts and paid subscriptions grew double digits year over year in third-quarter fiscal 2025. Apple TV+ viewership soared double-digit year over year. Expanding capabilities of AI Intelligence is noteworthy. Apple expects the September quarter's (fourth-quarter fiscal 2025) net sales to grow mid to high single digits on a year-over-year basis. AAPL expects the Services year-over-year growth rate to be similar to that of the June quarter. However, gross margin is expected to be 46-47% in the fourth quarter of fiscal 2025, including a tariff impact of $1.1 billion. Increasing regulatory headwinds and tariffs are a concern for investors. Apple shares have lagged the sector year to date.
The stock is up 5.74% over the past four weeks, and no earnings estimate has gone lower in the past two months, compared to 9 higher, for fiscal 2025. The consensus estimate has moved up as well.
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Apple Inc. (AAPL): Free Stock Analysis ReportThis article originally published on Zacks Investment Research (zacks.com).
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