Apple shipped a record number of iPhones last quarter — thanks in part to stockpiling ahead of tariffs

Apple just had its best first quarter ever in terms of iPhone shipments, according to new data from IDC’s Worldwide Quarterly Mobile Phone Tracker, having moved 57.9 million units. But that growth doesn’t necessarily mean Apple is selling more iPhones. Apple has been stockpiling its flagship product in the US — recently shipping 1.5 million iPhones to the US from India — in order to avoid incoming tariffs, so it’s likely that behavior is showing up in its shipment data.

To get an approximate idea of how many of those phones were part of the stockpiling effort, one could look toward IDC’s January forecasts, which were made long before the news or reciprocal tariffs rattled Apple. The market intelligence firm had previously estimated that Apple would ship 52.6 million units in Q1 — the same as last year, which is also in line with Morgan Stanley estimates for the year — so it’s possible that about 5 million of the shipments were due to tariffs.

“Faced with heightened geopolitical uncertainty and the looming threat of substantial US tariff hikes on goods imported from China, vendors strategically accelerated production schedules and pulled forward significant shipment volumes, particularly into the critical US market, during Q1 2025,” Francisco Jeronimo, VP of client devices at IDC, said. “This supply-side surge, aimed at mitigating potential cost increases and disruptions, effectively inflated Q1 shipment figures beyond levels anticipated based on underlying consumer demand trends alone.”