Cite the form and the period — all three of them. Apple's FY2025 Form 10-K, filed October 31, 2025, reports total gross margin of $195,201 million for fiscal 2025, $180,683 million for fiscal 2024, and $169,148 million for fiscal 2023, all on the same statement on a consistent basis. That is the cleanest possible comparison: one filing, three years. On net sales of $416,161 million (2025), $391,035 million (2024) and $383,285 million (2023), the consolidated gross-margin rate ran 46.9%, 46.2% and 44.1% respectively — a rate climbing even as the top line grew only modestly.

The arc is a mix story, and the segment table proves it. Apple splits gross margin between Products and Services. Over the three years, Products gross margin barely moved: $108,803 million (2023), $109,633 million (2024), $112,887 million (2025) — a gain of about $4 billion on a roughly $300 billion revenue base. Services gross margin, by contrast, climbed from $60,345 million to $71,050 million to $82,314 million — nearly $22 billion of additional gross margin in two years. So of the ~$26 billion total gross-margin increase across the arc, the Services line accounts for the overwhelming majority.

That is why the rate rose faster than volume would imply. Products gross-margin rate was essentially flat-to-down across the period — 36.5%, 37.2%, 36.8% — while Services rate expanded materially, from 70.8% to 73.9% to 75.4%. When a 75%-margin line grows 14% (Services net sales rose to $109,158 million in 2025 from $96,169 million in 2024 and $85,200 million in 2023) and a 37%-margin line grows low single digits, the blended margin drifts up by mix alone. No surge in unit volume is required; indeed, Wearables, Home and Accessories revenue fell to $35,686 million in 2025 from $37,005 million, and iPhone grew just 4% to $209,586 million.

The segment, as the company defines it. Apple does not report per-unit shipments, so the lever you can actually see in the filing is the category revenue split and the Products-versus-Services margin breakdown. Both point the same way: the durable profit gains are coming from the installed base monetized through Services — App Store, advertising, cloud, AppleCare and licensing — not from selling proportionally more hardware. Mac grew a healthy 12% to $33,708 million and iPad 5% to $28,023 million, but those are lower-margin Products dollars; they lift revenue more than they lift the blended rate.

Framing is free; the filing is filed. A launch event sells the next device; the 10-K records that the company's incremental gross margin is increasingly a Services phenomenon. Both can be true, but only one is on the record under penalty of law, and that is the one to anchor analysis to. The same document discloses, among its risk factors, regulatory and antitrust pressure on App Store and developer-fee economics — a direct risk to the 75.4% Services rate that is doing the heavy lifting in this arc.

Comparability hawkery. Anyone comparing Apple's gross margin across years should pull all the figures from the same filing, as here, to avoid stitching together restated or differently-defined numbers; the FY2025 10-K conveniently carries 2023, 2024 and 2025 side by side. And the consolidated gross-margin line ($195,201 million, 46.9%) should not be confused with the Services-only rate (75.4%), which the segment table reports separately. Confusing the two would badly overstate company-wide profitability.

Net sales across the arc make the volume-versus-mix point concrete. Total net sales rose from $383,285 million (2023) to $391,035 million (2024) to $416,161 million (2025) — about 8.6% over two years. Total gross margin over the same span rose from $169,148 million to $195,201 million, about 15.4%. Gross margin grew nearly twice as fast as revenue, which is the signature of a mix shift, not a volume surge: if growth were coming from selling proportionally more of the same hardware, gross margin and revenue would climb roughly in step. They did not, because the incremental dollars are disproportionately Services dollars at a 75%-plus rate.

The lower income statement carried the same lift through. Net income rose from $96,995 million (2023) to $93,736 million (2024) to $112,010 million (2025), with basic EPS of $6.16, $6.11 and $7.49 respectively. Total operating expenses grew to $62,151 million in 2025 (15% of net sales) from $54,847 million in 2023, with R&D reaching $34,550 million — yet the richer gross margin still expanded net income. That is the durable read: a mix tilt at the gross-margin line is powerful enough to fund a rising R&D commitment and still grow the bottom line.

One caveat on what a single-page comparison can and cannot tell you. The arc here is gross margin, the cleanest expression of the mix shift, but it is not the whole income statement; below it sit operating expenses that also grew across the period (total opex reached $62,151 million in fiscal 2025). The mix story is specifically a gross-margin story, and the value of reading it off one filing is that the 2023–2025 figures are defined and stated consistently — no restatement risk, no stitching across documents. Anyone extending the arc backward or forward should re-confirm the definitions in those years' filings rather than assuming the Products/Services split was reported on the same basis throughout.

The throughline: Apple's margin story is a mix story, and the three-year arc proves it on a single page of the filing — Services gross margin up nearly $22 billion while Products inched up about $4 billion. The primary record is the sec.gov 10-K; the figures were sourced and cross-checked against SEC filings, the SEC filing data API & evidence index.