The top five tech giants in the US all posted profits in the last three months of 2021. But the operator of Facebook was the only one to see a slowdown in earnings growth.

Apple booked a record net profit of 34.6 billion dollars for the October-to-December period. That's up 20 percent from a year earlier.

Google parent Alphabet also reported its largest-ever net income, coming in at 20.6 billion dollars. That was a 35-percent increase.

Microsoft's net profit was 21 percent higher at 18.7 billion dollars.

Amazon's net income doubled to a record 14.3 billion dollars.

Meta Platforms, formally known as Facebook, saw 10.2 billion dollars in net income for the quarter. But that was down 8 percent year-on-year, and the first quarterly decline in two-and-a-half years.

The company cited Apple's new privacy feature that allows app users to reject third-party tracing. Meta says the change has made it difficult to distribute ads tailored to users.