- Apple’s wearables business is now the size of a Fortune 200 company, CEO Tim Cook said on the company’s earnings call.
- That product category includes the Apple Watch, as well as its wildly successful AirPods wireless headphones.
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Apple’s wearables business had a blockbuster fiscal second quarter.
On the company’s earnings call, CEO Tim Cook said Apple’s wearables business is now the size of a Fortune 200 company, which he described as an “amazing” statistic given that the Apple Watch is only four years old.
Apple reported revenues of $5.1 billion for its Wearables, Home, and Accessories business in the first three months of 2019 , which is up from $3.9 billion in the same period of 2018. According to the most recent version of the Fortune 500 list, the cutoff for the Fortune 200 was at $14.6 billion in annual revenue in 2018.
It’s important to keep in mind that this category doesn’t just include wearables like the Apple Watch and AirPods, but also other devices like the HomePod and iPhone accessories. That means it’s unclear exactly how much revenue Apple generated from wearables alone.
Cook has made similar comparison in the past when describing the growth of Apple's wearables business. In 2017, he said the company's wearables business was the size of a Fortune 400 company.
Cook's comments come after the company recently released a new version of the AirPods with better performance and an optional wireless charging case, marking the product's first refresh since its launch in 2016.
Product categories like the wearables and services are increasingly important for Apple as it looks for ways to generate revenue beyond iPhone sales. Although Wall Street was happy with Apple's second quarter iPhone results after it surpassed expectations with $31.1 billion in revenue, that number still represents a decline from the $37.7 billion in iPhone revenue Apple reported in the year-ago quarter.
Apple also reported quarterly revenue of $58 billion, a decline of 5% from the same period one year ago.
Apple released the first Apple Watch in 2015, and it's since grown to become the world's most popular smartwatch, according to data from Strategy Analytics. Apple held 50.7% of the global smartwatch market share as of the fourth quarter of 2018, while Fitbit accounted for 12.75 and Samsung comprised of 13.2 percent.