For most investors, how much a stock's price changes over time is important. Not only can it impact your investment portfolio, but it can also help you compare investment results across sectors and industries.
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 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, new Apple TV app, Apple TV channels and Apple TV+, a new subscription service.
In fiscal 2025, Apple generated $416.16 billion in total revenues. The company’s flagship device iPhone accounted for 50.4% of total revenues. Services, Mac and iPad category contributed 26.2%, 8.1% and 6.7%, respectively. Wearables, Home and Accessories products category contributed 8.6%.
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 2025, Americas, Europe, Greater China, Japan and Rest of Asia-Pacific accounted for 42.9%, 26.7%, 15.5%, 6.9% and 8.1% 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
While anyone can invest, building a lucrative investment portfolio takes research, patience, and a little bit of risk. If you had invested in Apple ten years ago, you're probably feeling pretty good about your investment today.
According to our calculations, a $1000 investment made in February 2016 would be worth $11,019.58, or a gain of 1,001.96%, as of February 23, 2026, and this return excludes dividends but includes price increases.
In comparison, the S&P 500's gained 260.29% and the price of gold went up 299.78% over the same time frame.
Going forward, analysts are expecting more upside for AAPL.
Apple shares have outperformed the industry in the past six month. It is benefiting from strong growth in iPhone and Services revenues. AAPL continues to gain momentum in emerging markets India and Greater China reported strong fiscal first quarter growth driven by iPhone. The company now has more than 1 billion paid subscribers across its Services portfolio and 2.5 billion active devices. Expanding capabilities of AI Intelligence is noteworthy. Apple expects the March quarter's net sales to grow between 13% and 16% on a year-over-year basis despite constrained iPhone supply. Services are expected to grow at the fourth quarter of fiscal 2025 rate. However, gross margin is expected to be 48-49% in the second quarter of fiscal 2026. Increasing regulatory headwinds and stiff competition are major concerns for the iPhone-maker.
Shares have gained 6.67% over the past four weeks and there have been 9 higher earnings estimate revisions for fiscal 2026 compared to none lower. 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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