John Ternus assumed the chief executive role on Tuesday, stepping into a company that has nearly quadrupled revenue since 2011 and pushed its market value past $4 trillion. The milestone arrives with a conspicuous gap: Apple operates more than 500 retail locations worldwide and not one of them sits in Africa.
The numbers behind the valuation
Fiscal 2025 revenue was powered by $209.59 billion in iPhone sales, accounting for just over half of the total. Services contributed $109.16 billion and ran at a 75.4 percent profit margin, roughly double the hardware margin. The installed base of active devices crossed 2.5 billion, each one a potential source of recurring subscription and app revenue. The company also repurchased $89.3 billion of its own shares during the year, lifting the value of those that remain.
Africa does not appear in the filings
Apple does not disclose African results separately. The region is bundled with Europe, India and the Middle East, a segment that generated $111.03 billion in fiscal 2025. Web-usage data from Statcounter in August 2026 shows Apple devices accounting for 18.57 percent of mobile traffic across the continent, with wide variation: 31.97 percent in Ghana, 24.82 percent in South Africa, 17.92 percent in Nigeria and about 6.8 percent in Kenya. Those figures measure browsing, not sales, but they confirm a meaningful installed base.
Shipments tell a different story
Omdia’s first-quarter 2026 rankings placed Apple outside the top five smartphone vendors in Africa. Transsion, the parent of Tecno, Infinix and itel, captured 47 percent of shipments, reflecting a market where most buyers spend less than $150. Many iPhones in circulation arrive through resellers, parallel imports or the extensive secondhand market rather than through an Apple-controlled channel.
The reseller model and its trade-offs
In Nigeria, Kenya and South Africa, customers buy from authorized partners such as iStore and Salute iWorld. Those partners set local pricing, manage financing and handle repairs. The arrangement spares Apple the cost of buildings, staff and inventory, but it also means release timing, trade-in terms and support quality differ from one country to the next. For a company that prizes a uniform customer experience, the continent remains an exception built on someone else’s infrastructure.