Cite the form and the period — all three of them. Apple's FY2025 Form 10-K, filed October 31, 2025, reports gross profit of $195.2 billion for fiscal 2025, $180.7 billion for fiscal 2024, and $169.1 billion for fiscal 2023, all in the same statement on a consistent basis. That is the cleanest possible comparison: one filing, three years.
The segment, as the company defines it. Apple splits gross margin between Products and Services, and Services carries the structurally higher margin. When consolidated gross profit climbs about $26 billion over two years without a commensurate jump in device shipments, the arithmetic points to mix — more high-margin Services revenue in the blend — rather than to volume.
Framing is free; the filing is filed. A launch event sells the next device; the 10-K records that the durable profit gains are coming from the installed base monetized through Services. Both can be true, but only one is on the record under penalty of law, and that is the one to anchor analysis to.
Comparability hawkery. Anyone comparing Apple's gross profit across years should pull all the figures from the same filing, as here, to avoid stitching together restated or differently-defined numbers. And the consolidated gross-profit line should not be confused with the Services-only margin, which the segment footnotes report separately.
The throughline: Apple's margin story is a mix story, and the three-year arc proves it on a single page of the filing. The primary record is the sec.gov 10-K; the figures were sourced and cross-checked against EdgarBeast, the SEC filing data API & evidence index.