Apple also reported a gross margin of 50.1%, meaning the company kept just over half of each sales dollar after the direct costs of producing its devices and services. Tariff refunds added roughly two percentage points to gross margin, putting the underlying figure closer to 48.1%. Even after stripping out that boost, Apple delivered faster growth and strong profitability without incurring an enormous AI infrastructure bill. Apple guided to a gross margin of 47% to 48%, including another one-point benefit from tariff refunds. Its research and development spending jumped 32% to $11.7 billion, so this is hardly a company starving AI of investment.