Tech giants Apple and Amazon have defied trade predictions with better-than-expected monetary outcomes.
Apple’s success is basically due to record-breaking iPhone gross sales, whereas Amazon’s is all the way down to cloud computing arm Amazon Internet Companies (AWS), despite final week’s outage which knocked out 1000’s of internet sites.
AWS income accelerated 20.2% to $33bn (virtually £25bn), which CEO Andy Jassy stated was a tempo it hadn’t seen since 2022. AWS accounts for 60% of Amazon’s complete working earnings.
Cloud progress has been a key focus for the corporate within the face of ever-growing strain from rivals Google and Microsoft, which additionally reported income leaps this week.
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Whereas welcoming its newest outcomes, Amazon has additionally issued a cautious gross sales outlook. File pic: Reuters
iPhone on the cost
With Donald Trump introducing punishing tariffs on India and China – the principle manufacturing hubs for the iPhone – Apple’s document income has been much more welcome for boss Tim Cook dinner.
The tariffs value Apple $1.1bn (£824m) in the course of the previous quarter and are anticipated to value one other $1.4bn (simply over £1bn) in the course of the ultimate three months of the yr, however the brand new iPhone 17 vary is a success.
Customers have been received over by a value level that did not stray above final yr’s mannequin, notably within the US and Europe, resulting in gross sales totalling $49bn (£36.1bn) in the course of the July-September interval – 6% up on final yr.
International market analyst IDC says virtually 59 million iPhones have been bought worldwide within the July-September quarter, placing Apple second behind Samsung at 61.4 million of their Android-powered telephones.
Buoyed by the iPhone outcomes, Apple earned $27.5bn (£21.4bn), or $1.85 per share (£1.44), almost doubling its revenue from a yr in the past. Income climbed 8% from a yr in the past to $102.5bn (£80bn).
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Tim Cook dinner was famously as soon as referred to by Donald Trump as ‘Tim Apple’. Pic: Reuters
Wall Road analysts had been cautious about each firms, and their tech rivals, due to uncertainty attributable to tariffs and whether or not funding in AI has been overplayed.
Whereas welcoming its newest outcomes, Amazon has issued a cautious gross sales outlook for the fiscal fourth quarter, citing continued Trump tariffs as a potential bump within the income highway.
Corporations, together with Amazon, are introducing AI into almost each aspect of their operations in hopes of lowering prices and boosting productiveness. There have been tens of 1000’s of job losses at US tech companies this yr.
On Wednesday, Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell stated he didn’t imagine the AI increase was a speculative bubble just like the dot-com period, when many firms have been “ideas rather than businesses”.
Right this moment’s AI leaders “actually have earnings,” he stated.
