Quarterly figures Apple: Significantly higher costs for memory chips
The drastic increase in memory chip prices is also affecting Apple, the iPhone company known for its robust supply chain. The company is expecting "significantly" higher costs for memory in the current quarter, said CEO Tim Cook.
30.04.2026, 23:19
01.05.2026, 01:42
SDA
The price of memory will continue to have an increasing impact on Apple's business thereafter. For months now, exorbitant demand for memory for AI data centers has been causing prices to rise on the market - and there is no end in sight to the shortage because it takes years to build up new capacity.
Apple has two chip problems at once. In recent months, the company has already underestimated the demand for iPhones and some models of its Mac computers, which developers like to use for working on artificial intelligence.
It will take months to catch up with demand, said Cook. The cheaper MacBook Neo also sold better than expected. And in times of the AI boom, even a major customer like Apple cannot find enough capacity quickly enough to produce the chip systems that are the computer brain of the devices. These bottlenecks have slowed down the iPhone and Mac business in recent months, as Cook emphasized.
Apple money machine
Nevertheless, Apple posted strong growth in its latest quarterly figures. Profits rose by a good 19 percent year-on-year to 29.58 billion US dollars.
iPhone sales grew by almost 22 percent to just under 57 billion dollars. However, Apple failed to meet the even higher expectations of analysts, who had expected an average of 57.2 billion dollars. However, the bottlenecks seemed to be a plausible explanation for investors. The share price, which had initially fallen slightly in after-hours trading, rose by around three percent following Cook's statement.
Apple's consolidated turnover exceeded market expectations with an increase of 17 percent to 111.2 billion dollars. A major driver was the 16 percent increase in revenue to almost 31 billion dollars in the services business, for example with subscriptions for music, streaming video or storage space.
Duty repayment
Cook announced that Apple would invest any repayments of US import duties in the USA. The US Supreme Court had denied the legal basis for a large part of the tariffs imposed by President Donald Trump. However, it is unclear when repayments could be made. According to estimates by investor and long-time industry analyst Gene Munster, Apple could get around five billion dollars back.
Brief appearance of the next boss
The current hardware manager John Ternus, who is due to take over from Cook on September 1, made a brief appearance in the conference call with analysts on the quarterly results. Among other things, he assured the audience that he would proceed with caution when making financial decisions - just as Cook already did.
Among other things, Ternus has the task of bringing the improved version of the voice assistant Siri, which Apple announced almost two years ago with the help of artificial intelligence, to users' devices. Cook confirmed that the software will be introduced this year.
