Apple Inc on Thursday forecast revenue well above Wall Street’s estimates, following strong second-quarter results supported by customers buying iPhones early to avoid US President Donald Trump’s tariffs.
Apple chief financial officer Kevan Parekh said the company expects revenue growth for the current quarter to be in the “mid to high single digits,” which exceeded the 3.27 percent growth to US$98.04 billion that analysts expected, LSEG data showed.
The company’s quarterly sales beat expectations by the biggest percentage in at least four years, the data showed.
Photo: AFP
However, Apple chief executive officer Tim Cook told analysts during a conference call that those tariffs had cost Apple US$800 million in the second quarter and might add US$1.1 billion in costs to the current quarter.
Apple posted US$94.04 billion of revenue for the quarter ended June 28, up nearly 10 percent from a year earlier and beating analyst expectations of US$89.54 billion, LSEG data showed.
Its earnings per share of US$1.57 topped expectations of US$1.43 per share.
Sales of iPhones, Apple’s best-selling product, were up 13.5 percent to US$44.58 billion, beating analyst expectations of US$40.22 billion.
Apple has been shifting production of products bound for the US, sourcing iPhones from India and other products such as Macs and Apple Watches from Vietnam.
The ultimate tariffs many Apple products could face remain in flux, whiled many of its products are currently exempt. Sales in its Americas, which includes the US and could face tariff impacts, rose 9.3 percent to US$41.2 billion.
In China, where Apple has faced long delays in approval to introduce artificial intelligence (AI) features on its devices, sales were US$15.37 billion, up from the sxame period last year and above expectations of US$15.12 billion, a survey of five analysts from data firm Visible Alpha showed.
That gain was a turnaround from a year-on-year decline in sales in China the first quarter.
In an interview with Reuters, Cook said the company set seasonal records for upgrades of iPhones, Macs and Apple Watches. Apple estimates about 1 percentage point of its 9.6 percent of sales growth in the quarter was attributable to customers making purchases ahead of potential tariffs, he said.
“We saw evidence in the early part of the quarter, specifically, of some pull-ahead related to the tariff announcements,” Cook said, adding that the active user base for iPhones hit a record high in all geographies.
“The pull-forward in demand due to tariffs was somewhat expected given the uncertainty around pricing. However, it’s important to put this in context as this is typically a slow quarter for Apple, yet they still delivered exceptional results with iPhone growth,” Emarketer analyst Jacob Bourne said.
While AI leaders Microsoft and Nvidia have seen their stock market values soar to record highs, Apple’s shares have fallen 17 percent this year.
Cairo’s new monorail slices across the city skyline, running above the familiar chaos of blaring horns and aging buses’ exhaust fumes that mark rush hour below. The US$4.5 billion monorail, opened this month, is among Egypt’s most prominent new transport projects, part of a debt-funded infrastructure drive criticized for sapping state finances while bringing limited benefits to most of the country’s 109 million people. “It feels like you’re in a different country,” said Ramy Sayed, a restaurant manager, aboard a driverless Innovia 300 train. “No noise, no traffic, we’re not used to this.” The eastern line runs 56km from the bustling middle-class
Taiwanese firms have increased investment in the Philippines in recent years as Manila’s ties with Washington deepen and global supply chains continue to shift away from China, an expert at the Chung-Hua Institution for Economic Research (CIER, 中華經濟研究院) said yesterday. The Philippines had not been among Taiwanese investors’ top choices in Southeast Asia, CIER Taiwan ASEAN Studies Center director Kristy Hsu (徐遵慈) said at a seminar in Taipei. However, Taiwan’s investment in the country has grown significantly since the COVID-19 pandemic, reaching US $257 million last year, a high in recent years, she said. Although Taiwan’s total investment in the Philippines still lags
Intel Corp regards Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) as a longstanding partner, as the US chipmaker would continue outsourcing production of advanced chips to TSMC, Intel chief executive officer Lip-Bu Tan (陳立武) said yesterday. “I don’t look at people as competitors. I look at the collaboration... Nvidia is also, you know, a good friend,” Tan told a news conference following his keynote speech at the Computex trade show in Taipei. “It’s a very trusted partnership for us... We are a big, top customer for them, and we’re going to continue doing that,” he said, referring to TSMC, the world’s largest foundry
Artificial intelligence (AI) agents would supplant smartphones as the center of people’s digital lives, fundamentally reshaping personal devices and driving a major computing upgrade cycle, Qualcomm Inc CEO Cristiano Amon said yesterday. In his keynote speech for this year’s Computex trade show in Taipei, Amon said that the rise of "agentic AI" — AI systems capable of reasoning, planning and carrying out tasks autonomously — would transform how people interact with technology across phones, PCs, vehicles and wearable devices. Describing the technology as the next major evolution in computing, Amon said that "2026 is the year of agents.” For decades, smartphones have sat