Apple quietens Wall Street’s fears of China struggles and slow AI progress
Apple has been under pressure this year.It’s playing catch-up to its fellow tech giants on artificial intelligence, it’s seen its stock fall by double digits since the year began, it closed a store in China for the first time ever this week, and looming US tariffs on Beijing threaten its supply chain.On Thursday, the company released its third-quarter earnings of the fiscal year as investors scrutinize how the iPhone maker might turn things around.Despite the gloomy outlook, the company is still worth more than $3tn, and it beat Wall Street’s expectations for profit and revenue this quarter.Apple reported a huge 10% year-over-year increase in revenue to $94.
04bn, and $1,57 per share in earnings,That’s substantially more than the $89,3bn in revenue and $1,43 per share that analysts predicted and is the company’s biggest revenue growth since 2021.
Apple’s iPhone revenue also outperformed Wall Street’s expectations, coming in 13% higher than the same time last year.Tim Cook, Apple’s chief executive, said in a statement that the company was “proud” to report a “June quarter revenue record”, showing growth in its iPhone, Mac and services divisions.On an earnings call on Thursday, he said the quarterly results were “better than we expected”.Dipanjan Chatterjee, a vice-president and principal analyst for Forrester, said rising services tend to boost the company’s revenue stream.“Apple has grown accustomed to having revenue growth in this high-margin services business, which masks other areas of the business not performing as well,” Chatterjee explained.
He pointed to several issues that had led to Apple’s less-than-stellar product performance of late,He said Apple had lagged on hardware innovation, causing “consumer apathy”, and its AI rollout had been glitchy,Apple Intelligence, Apple’s AI product, has been limited to incremental features and rather than transformational upgrades,And it’s been more than a year since Apple announced a suite of AI upgrades to its voice assistant Siri – many of which have yet to be released,“This work [on Siri] needed more time to reach our high-quality bar,” said Craig Federighi, Apple’s vice-president of software engineering, during the company’s developer conference in June.
Donald Trump’s sweeping tariffs have also been a pain point for the company as the US president pushes his desire for manufacturing to boom in the US.The vast majority of Apple’s products are made in China, with about 90% of iPhones assembled there, despite recent efforts to shift production elsewhere.Cook said during the company’s previous quarterly earnings call that he expected the China tariffs to add $900m to its costs this quarter.Apple has attempted to pivot, moving more of its manufacturing to other countries such as India and Vietnam.However, this week, Trump announced a rise in tariffs on India, too, up to 25% starting on 1 August.
Sign up to TechScapeA weekly dive in to how technology is shaping our livesafter newsletter promotionOn Thursday’s earnings call, Cook reminded analysts that Apple had pledged to invest $500bn in the US over the next four years and that “ultimately we will do more in the United States”.He added Apple was “making good progress on a more personalized Siri” and promised a release next year.Because of the external and internal pressures, Apple has seen its share price plummet this year.Once the industry leader of the “Magnificent Seven” – the most valuable publicly traded companies in the world, all American technology giants – Apple boasted the highest-performing stock and biggest market capitalization on the US stock market.Now its share price is the second-worst performing after Tesla in percentage decline among the seven.
Since January, Apple’s stock has fallen roughly 15%.In after-hours trading on Thursday, though, the company saw a slight increase of 2.5% in its share price.
UK food inflation: why your barbecue meat is becoming more expensive
The weather is not the only thing putting a dampener on impromptu barbecues as consumers balk at the soaring cost of burgers, sausages and chicken to put on the grill.At nearly £4, a four-pack of supermarket own-label beef quarter-pounders costs 53%, or £1.37, more than this time last year, according to the price analysts Assosia. With steak and kebabs also off the menu because they are too pricey, Britons are switching to poultry.However, this extra demand is pushing up the price of chicken
Openreach engineers trial panic alarms as incidents of abuse and assault soar
From scissors being brandished as weapons to verbal abuse and being trapped during a home visit, the number of reported incidents of abuse and assault on telecoms engineers is on the rise.Openreach, the BT subsidiary that maintains the vast majority of the broadband network serving UK homes and businesses, recorded 450 reports of abuse and assault in the year to the end of March.The number of incidents involving Openreach employees was up 8% year-on-year, a 40% increase on 2022-23 and seven times the volume reported almost a decade ago.Abuse and assault has for the first time become the largest cause of injury to Openreach office staff and its 22,000 field engineers. Managers believe the number of incidents is even higher, as many cases are not reported by staff
Trump steps up attacks on Fed’s independence amid interest rates row
Donald Trump called on top Federal Reserve officials to seize control from its chair, Jerome Powell, if he fails to cut interest rates, stepping up his extraordinary attacks on the central bank’s independence.The US president called Powell “a stubborn MORON” in a series of critical social media posts on Friday, days after the Fed held rates steady for the fifth consecutive time.It comes as Trump faces heightened questions over the impact of his aggressive economic policy, and the White House presses forward with plans for a fresh wave of tariffs next week.Hours before the federal government released data which underlined a significant deterioration in the jobs market, Trump again broke with precedent to pin blame on the Fed – and urge it to change course.“Jerome ‘Too Late’ Powell, a stubborn MORON, must substantially lower interest rates, NOW,” Trump wrote on Truth Social, his social network
Barclays follows HSBC in exit from banking industry’s net zero alliance
Barclays has become the second UK bank to withdraw from a UN-backed net zero target-setting group, claiming that a wave of defections by international lenders meant it was no longer fit for purpose.It marks a fresh blow for the Net-Zero Banking Alliance (NZBA), after HSBC left in early July. It came months after a wave of exits by US banks, which departed in the run-up to Donald Trump’s inauguration in January.Lenders and other finance firms have come under fresh pressure over their green commitments as a result of Trump’s return to the White House, which caused a climate backlash as he pushed for higher production of oil and gas.The UN environment programme’s finance initiative, which is led by banks, required members to ensure their lending, investment and capital markets activities would lead them to hitting net zero emissions targets by 2050 or earlier
Labour MPs urge Thames Water to recover £2.5m paid to executives in April
Thames Water should claw back £2.5m in bonuses that were paid to executives in April, 27 Labour MPs representing constituencies served by the utility have urged.The MPs said it was “disgusting” that the company was hiking water bills “to pay for executives’ failings when those same executives were receiving multimillion-pound bonuses”.In a letter to Thames Water’s director of corporate finance, Fred Maroudas, they called for the company to scrap its next planned round of bonuses in September and reinvest the money into water infrastructure.The letter from 27 Labour MPs in areas served by Thames Water, coordinated by Yuan Yang, the MP for Earley and Woodley, set out demands for the company, including resolving the most severe cases of pollution and failure highlighted by their constituents
US adds just 73,000 jobs in July amid pressure from Trump’s trade war
The US economy added 73,000 jobs in July, far lower than expected, amid ongoing concerns with Donald Trump’s escalating trade war.Forecasters surveyed by Bloomberg had predicted the July jobs report would show a drop in added jobs to about 109,000. The unemployment rate rose to 4.2% from 4.1% in June
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