Showing posts sorted by date for query CAPPLETALI$M. Sort by relevance Show all posts
Showing posts sorted by date for query CAPPLETALI$M. Sort by relevance Show all posts

Friday, July 31, 2026

CAPPLETALI$M 

Apple shares fall despite record revenue as outlook disappoints

FILE - The Apple logo is illuminated at a store in Munich, 2 April  2026.
Copyright AP Photo/Matthias Schrader, File

By Doloresz Katanich with AP
Published on

Apple’s iPhone revenue jumped by almost 22% in the three months to June, but its forecast for the current quarter fell short of analysts’ expectations.

Apple beat market expectations with its latest quarterly results on Thursday, thanks to strong sales of iPhones and Mac computers, capping Tim Cook's final earnings report as CEO.

However, investors focused on Apple’s weaker-than-expected outlook and warnings about supply constraints. The company forecast revenue growth of between 9% and 11% in the current quarter, below analysts’ expectations of around 12%.

The strong quarter was also clouded by rising memory-chip costs and shortages of advanced chipmaking capacity, partly linked to the artificial intelligence boom.

Apple previously described the surge in demand as an “unprecedented challenge” for the consumer electronics industry.

As a result, Apple announced last month that it would raise prices for some Mac and iPad models. It has not yet increased iPhone prices, although analysts expect it could do so later this year.

The maker of the iPhone and iPad said on Thursday that it earned $29.79bn (€25.9bn), or $2.02 per share, during the April-to-June period. That was up 27% from $23.43bn (€20.4bn), or $1.57 per share, a year earlier.

Revenue grew 16% to $109.42bn (€95.2bn) from $94.04bn (€81.8bn).

Revenue from iPhone sales rose by 21.7% to a quarterly record of $54.25bn (€47.2bn), while Mac revenue climbed by 28.7% to $10.35bn (€9bn).

Analysts, on average, were expecting earnings of $1.89 per share on revenue of around $109bn (€94.8bn), according to a FactSet poll. Tariff refunds contributed $0.11 per share to Apple’s earnings.

"Today, Apple is proud to report our strongest June quarter ever, with double-digit revenue growth across iPhone, Mac and Services, and in every geographic segment," said Tim Cook, Apple's CEO.

It was Cook's final earnings call before he steps down as chief executive after 15 years. John Ternus, Apple's head of hardware engineering, will take over on 1 September.

"I couldn't be more confident in his leadership, in the executive team and the extraordinary people at Apple," Cook said.

Apple continues to generate cash without the massive artificial intelligence spending facing its Big Tech peers, “and that showed across most parts of the operation,” said Thomas Monteiro, an analyst at Investing.com.

“As the market grows more worried about free cash flow trajectories elsewhere in Big Tech, Apple keeps standing out as the safe haven in the storm.”

But he cautioned that rising memory costs could challenge Apple in the coming quarters.

Cook described the surge in memory prices as a “100-year flood”, saying Apple expected its memory costs to rise further during the current quarter.

The company will also no longer benefit from the tariff refunds that boosted its latest profit margin. September’s iPhone launch and potential further price increases should “help cushion the hit”, Monteiro said.

Shares in Apple fell by as much as 8% in after-hours trading on Thursday before recovering some of those losses.

The company recently regained its position as the world's most valuable listed company from Nvidia.




Friday, July 10, 2026

CAPPLETALI$M


Apple loses challenge against EU digital competition rules


AFP
July 8, 2026


Image: — © AFP/File Chris DELMAS


Apple lost its bid to escape digital competition rules after an EU court on Wednesday rejected the US giant’s challenge.

Apple appealed the European Union’s decision to apply stricter rules known as the Digital Markets Act (DMA) on its operating system iOS and App Store.

“The General Court dismisses all the actions brought by Apple,” the Luxembourg-based court said in a statement. “It confirms the designation of Apple as a gatekeeper in relation to the App Store and iOS.”

Companies like Apple are designated a so-called “gatekeeper” under the DMA, and their apps are subject to extra scrutiny as “core platform services”.

The DMA comes with a list of do’s and don’ts for the world’s biggest digital platforms in an attempt to keep them in check and create an open online space.

Apple has been one of the law’s fiercest critics, calling on the EU to repeal the DMA last year. The company defended its position after the ruling.

“We firmly believe the DMA’s mandate goes beyond what is lawful and proportionate, threatening to erode decades of privacy and security protections we’ve built and leaving our users vulnerable to new risks,” the company said.

“We will continue advocating for the innovation and privacy our European customers deserve,” Apple added in a statement.

Apple had also brought a challenge against the EU concerning iMessage but the court found the actions relating to iMessage “inadmissable”.

The EU had investigated whether iMessage should also comply with the DMA but ultimately Brussels decided against more rules on the messaging service.

“None of the obligations laid down by the DMA applies to iMessage since that service has not been listed in a designation decision as an important gateway,” the court said.



– ‘Good news’ –



A separate case brought by Apple relates to interoperability under the DMA, as it forces companies to make their products accessible to rivals.

The same EU court is still due to rule on interoperability.

The decision is another victory for the European Commission, the EU’s digital watchdog, after TikTok and Meta also lost challenges against the DMA.

Chinese-owned TikTok has, however, challenged the lower court’s 2024 ruling.

The European Consumer Organisation (BEUC) welcomed Wednesday’s decision.

“It is good news,” BEUC director general Agustin Reyna said, adding: “Anything less would have jeopardised the positive impact the Digital Markets Act is having in creating more choice for consumers online.”

He added Apple’s “resources would be better spent directed towards complying in full and without delay with the law”.

Monday, June 08, 2026

CAPPLETALI$M

Apple to make AI software push at upcoming Silicon Valley conference

The logo of Apple is illuminated at a store in the city center in Munich, Germany, Wednesday, Dec. 16, 2020
Copyright AP Photo/Matthias Schrader

By Anna Desmarais & AP
Published on


The tech giant is expected to launch new AI integration into its software and changes to the voice assistant, Siri.

Apple will be setting its artificial intelligence (AI) agenda at its annual developers conference this week.

The Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC), an information technology conference held annually both online and on-location in Apple Park, regularly focuses on software updates.

Apple touted Apple Intelligence integration into its new operating system, iOS 27, ahead of the conference.

Expected new AI features include improvements to Image Playground, which is rumoured to generate more lifelike images, and an upgraded Genmoji feature that would proactively suggest custom graphics based on a user's photo library. The centrepiece, however, is expected to be a major overhaul of Siri, powered by Google's Gemini AI.

Apple launched Apple Intelligence, the AI arm of its technology in 2024. At the time, it integrated OpenAI's ChatGPT into Apple devices, but has since struck a deal with Google to make Gemini AI its primary AI partner, with ChatGPT remaining available as an opt-in option.

The company has been criticised for taking longer than rivals Samsung and Google to rush out the technology, but analysts have previously told Euronews Next that Apple is now in a position to take a “wait-and-see” approach with new AI technologies to offer customers a better experience than its rivals.

Analysts told the Associated Press that Apple could show its AI expansion into some new hardware products, such as foldables, wearable tech and smart home products "by way of developer and ecosystem updates," according to Gadjo Sevilla, a senior analyst at research market company Emarketer.

Sevilla also expects Apple to launch new features for Siri, the built-in voice assistant.

Sevilla said he anticipates Siri should be more conversational, able to pick up multiple tasks in one request and will have more memory.

“An upgraded, agentic version of Siri — capable of managing conversations and tasks across iPhones, Macs, and iPads — could become as ubiquitous as features like AirDrop and Handoff, which already unify Apple’s ecosystem,” Sevilla told the Associated Press.

This WWDC is also the last for Apple CEO Tim Cook, who announced his retirement in April, passing the torch to John Ternus, the senior vice president of hardware engineering.

During the Cook era, Apple grew to be worth $4 trillion (€3.44tn). Cook took the helm in 2011, four years after the iPhone's launch, but presided over its global dominance.

Friday, April 10, 2026

CAPPLETALI$M

The Age of the Gilded Apple


April 10, 2026

Photo by JK Sloan

Half a century is plenty of time for an Apple to stay fresh, or to rot.

The New York Times’s Kalley Huang (“For Employee No. 8, Many Changes in Apple’s 50-Year History,” April 2) traces the evolution of Apple Inc. from a “scrappy start-up that assembled computers by hand” — and whose organic name was a natural fit for an environment in which “Silicon Valley’s fruit orchards hadn’t yet been taken over by office parks” — to one which “has come to define how to be a global technology company.”

In a 2014 Bloomberg interview, Steve Wozniak recalled how he had “given away my designs for the Apple-1 for free,” leaving it to Steve Jobs to take projects the other Steve had “designed for fun” (while being “totally aware that a revolution was close to starting”) and “somehow turn them into some money for both of us.” The sum of their money would become so enormous that Chris Espinosa, who admits that having “had no college degree and … only worked at one company” since 1976 doesn’t sound like much of a résumé, owns what Huang estimates is well over $100 million worth of the corporation that makes a thousandfold of that in profit every year.

Craig Newmark’s op-ed “Craigslist Made Me Rich. Giving the Money Away is Easy” might have included Espinosa as evidence for how “making money isn’t proof to me that I know something any better than someone else” but of being “in the right place, at the right time” to apply common sense to a new field, if it hadn’t gone to print in the same day’s edition of The New York Times.  Newmark doesn’t propose any political program, keeping his distance even from any endorsement of “left-wing nonprofits” and instead promoting such voluntary philanthropic efforts as the Giving Pledge. Still, the public souring on the information industry, as captured by such titles as Douglas Rushkoff’s Throwing Rocks at the Google Bus and Tripp Mickle’s After Steve: How Apple Became a Trillion-Dollar Company and Lost Its Soul, might seem the inevitable result of it enabling such outsized yet largely fortuitous accumulations in the first place.

The Giving Pledge cofounder Bill Gates owes much of his fortune to emulating Apple. The video game Halo was first showcased at MacWorld by Jobs before it became an exclusive killer app for Microsoft’s Xbox. Gates’s Windows operating system tapped the talent of Macintosh’s iconic icon designer Susan Kare. And yet the broader impact of Apple’s innovations is hardly confined to such sheerly financial windfalls.

This is not just because Apple efforts like the HyperCard which made creating and viewing multimedia straightforward, the Pippin which brought built-in Internet access to a video game console, and the Newton which pioneered the personal digital assistant were influential on later developments without managing to become profitable products for them or anyone else.

Indeed, much of the creativity that spread from Apple’s roots in Cupertino, California to cyberspace is closer in spirit to Wozniak than Jobs. It was entirely typical for Stephen D. Young and Debra Willrett’s Backgammon, programmed for the Apple Macintosh in the same non-Orwellian year 1984 during which the desktop model was introduced, to give out a postal address for users who “enjoy it and would like to see more ‘freeware'” to “please send whatever you think it’s worth” … and permission for them to disseminate the software itself.

Huang notes that Apple’s current survival requires not just satisfying customers but withstanding “tariff whiplash, antitrust scrutiny and geopolitical turmoil.”  Consumer sovereignty and cooperative networking can tame such seemingly relentless forces — and make the fruits of tech’s golden geese as common as dirt.

Josh Schlossberg is a writer, investigative journalist, and recovering activist hiding out in the foothills of the Colorado Rockies. He’s the host of the Green Root Podcast, a quest to uncover the roots of the modern ecological crisis. You can find him on Twitter at @JoshSchlossberg or email him at greenrootpodcast@protonmail.com.  

Saturday, September 27, 2025

CAPPLETALI$M

Apple asks EU to scrap landmark digital competition law


By AFP
September 25, 2025


Image — © GETTY IMAGES NORTH AMERICA/AFP/File SCOTT OLSON

Apple asked the European Union to scrap its landmark digital competition law on Thursday, arguing that it poses security risks and creates a “worse experience” for consumers.

The US tech giant and the EU have repeatedly locked horns over the bloc’s Digital Markets Act (DMA), which Brussels says seeks to make the digital sector in the 27-nation bloc fairer and more open.

“The DMA should be repealed while a more appropriate fit for purpose legislative instrument is put in place,” Apple said in a formal submission to the European Commission as part of a consultation on the law.

The latest clash came as President Donald Trump sought to pressure the EU over decisions and laws affecting US Big Tech — with key industry figures including Apple chief Tim Cook moving closer to the White House since Trump’s return to power.

“It’s become clear that the DMA is leading to a worse experience for Apple users in the EU,” the tech giant said in a blog post accompanying its submission. “It’s exposing them to new risks, and disrupting the simple, seamless way their Apple products work together.”

Pushing for wholesale reform of the law if it is not repealed, Apple suggested enforcement “should be undertaken by an independent European agency” rather than the commission, the EU’s executive arm and digital watchdog.

The DMA challenges Apple’s closed ecosystem, but Brussels argues that it is necessary to do so to level the playing field for Apple’s rivals and avoid unfair market domination.

The law tells Big Tech firms what they can and cannot do on their platforms. For example, companies must offer choice screens for web browsers and search engines to give users more options.

Violations of the DMA can lead to hefty fines.

Brussels in April slapped a 500-million-euro ($590-million) fine on Apple under the DMA, which the company has appealed.

– Delays for EU users –


Apple says dangers are posed when Europeans can download app marketplaces that rival its App Store.

The giant also cites an increasing number of complaints from users about DMA-related changes but has not provided exact figures.

It argued in its 25-page submission that the EU’s law had forced it to delay new features in the bloc.

For example, Apple has not yet rolled out “live translation” — which allows consumers to choose another language to hear via AirPods in their ears.

The technology was launched this month in the United States but Apple says it must undertake further engineering work to ensure users’ privacy in the EU.

Under the DMA, companies including Apple must make sure their products can work seamlessly with third-party devices such as earphones.

The commission said it was “normal” companies sometimes needed more time to make sure their products were in line with the new law and that it was helping them comply.

DMA enforcement began in March 2024 and the EU’s consultation on the first review of the law ended just before midnight on Wednesday.

Independently from the digital rules, Apple has faced the heat under different EU competition rules. Brussels slapped it with a 1.8-billion-euro fine in March 2024.

EU queries Apple, Google, Microsoft over financial scams


By AFP
September 23, 2025


Image: — © Copyright AFP GREG BAKER


Raziye Akkoc

The European Union on Tuesday demanded Big Tech players including Apple and Google explain what action they are taking against financial scams online, as Brussels seeks to show it is not shying away from enforcing its rules.

The European Commission sent a request for information under the Digital Services Act to the companies, including Microsoft and Booking, “on how they make sure that their services are not being misused by scammers”, an EU spokesman said.

The DSA is the EU’s landmark law demanding Big Tech firms do more to tackle illegal content but it has faced retaliation threats from US President Donald Trump, and censorship claims from the US tech sector.

The EU has vowed it will not back down from enforcing its stringent rules to protect Europeans online.

Tuesday’s request could lead to a probe under the DSA and even fines, but does not itself suggest the law has been broken, nor is it a move towards punishment.

“This is an essential step also to protect users across the EU from certain of these practices, and to make sure that platforms in the EU also play their role,” EU digital affairs spokesman Thomas Regnier told reporters in Brussels.

The request relates to Apple’s App Store, Google Play, online travel agent Booking and Microsoft’s Bing search engine.

The EU fears app stores could be used by scammers to create fake apps posing as legitimate banking providers or fraudsters could publish links to fake websites on search engines.

– Trump threats –

The EU has a bolstered legal armoury with the DSA and its sister law, the Digital Markets Act, which seeks to ensure fair competition online.

Brussels has already launched multiple investigations under the DSA into Meta’s Facebook and Instagram as well as TikTok and X.

But its rules have faced the wrath of Trump — who has shaken up global trade by hitting America’s trading partners with higher tariffs and threatened more levies on those he accuses of targeting US tech companies.

The US State Department, Trump allies and critics including Meta chief Mark Zuckerberg and X owner Elon Musk have called the EU’s rules censorship.

The EU rejects such claims, stressing that whatever is illegal in the real world is also illegal in the online realm.

It has also pushed back at accusations it is targeting American titans, pointing to investigations into China’s big players that face DSA scrutiny including shopping platform AliExpress.

Defenders of the bloc’s tech rules have meanwhile attacked the EU for failing to complete its probe into Musk’s X, which opened in December 2023. X is expected to be hit with a fine but Brussels says technical work in the investigation continues.

EU digital chief Henna Virkkunen told AFP last week that probes into online platforms including X will be completed in the “coming weeks and months”.

She warned more investigations could also be on the way.

“We will probably start new ones because the DSA, of course, it’s a huge legislation,” she said.

Thursday, September 25, 2025

CAPPLETALI$M

Apple presses EU to drop competition law, raises consumer concerns

Apple on Thursday urged the European Union to scrap its Digital Markets Act (DMA), the competition law that came into force last year to curb the power of big tech firms.

 25/09/2025 - RFI

The European Union has imposed new rules on global tech companies. AFP - NIC COURY

The company said the regulation is harming European consumers and weakening the quality of its services.

"The DMA should be repealed while a more appropriate fit for purpose legislative instrument is put in place," Apple said in a formal submission to the European Commission. The statement was filed as part of a public consultation on the law.

EU competition officials say the DMA will make the digital sector in the 27-nation bloc fairer and more open. The legislation targets firms seen as "gatekeepers" with dominant control over online services.

Apple pushes back


Apple has fought the DMA since it was drafted. It argues that the law forces changes that reduce security and limit innovation.

The company, based in Cupertino in California, said it has been forced to remove features from new products released in Europe. Apple said this goes against its mission of giving consumers the most advanced tools possible.

The company also called for the creation of a new independent regulatory agency, separate from the Commission, to enforce the rules if repeal is not possible.


Earphones restricted


Apple gave several examples in its Thursday statement. It said its new wireless earphones, the AirPods Pro 3, had to be released in the EU without the automatic live translation function, one of their headline features. The firm blamed the DMA for the restriction.

Apple also repeated its opposition to opening up its devices to rival app stores and alternative payment systems, which the DMA requires. It argued that these systems do not match the privacy and security standards of its own App Store.

Apple has long relied on a closed ecosystem in which it controls all aspects of its products. It says this model protects users and offers better performance. But EU competition authorities see it as a way of blocking rivals and limiting consumer choice.

Heavy penalties


The Digital Markets Act was adopted in 2022 and took effect in March 2024. It allows the EU to fine companies up to 10 percent of their global turnover, or up to 20 percent for repeat offences.

In April, the European Commission fined Apple €500 million for unfair terms imposed on developers in its App Store. The penalty, which Apple has appealed, was the first handed out under the new law.

Apple also faces a separate EU probe under the Digital Services Act, another flagship law that requires online platforms to protect users from illegal and harmful content.

Wednesday, August 20, 2025

CAPPLETALI$M

UK drops demand for access to Apple user data


By AFP
August 19, 2025


Many tech firms pride themselves on refusing to provide government agencies with access to users' data - Copyright AFP -

Britain has dropped its request for access to Apple users’ encrypted data, which had created friction between London and Washington, US intelligence chief Tulsi Gabbard said Tuesday.

The UK government wanted the tech giant to create a “back door” to let authorities snoop on data uploaded by Apple users if required, for example by law enforcement agencies.

Gabbard said the request “would have enabled access to the protected encrypted data of American citizens and encroached on our civil liberties”.

Many tech platforms pride themselves on being able to guarantee privacy through encryption of messages and other content, and providing access to law enforcement has long been seen as off-limits.

The UK “agreed to drop its mandate” after months of work with US President Donald Trump and Vice President JD Vance, Gabbard posted on X.

The UK interior ministry declined to comment, telling AFP that “We do not comment on operational matters.”

Apple stopped offering its most advanced encryption feature — known as Advanced Data Protection — for British users in February.

ADP ensures that only account holders can view content such as photos and documents stored in the cloud through end-to-end encryption.

Police officials worldwide say encryption can shield criminals, terrorists and pornographers from prosecution even when authorities have a legal warrant for an investigation.

But civil rights and privacy advocates, along with many cybersecurity professionals, praise data encryption as a way to protect against wrongful snooping by authorities as well as hackers.

Apple said earlier this year that it had never built a “back door” or “master key” for any of its products or services, and never would.

Sunday, June 29, 2025

CAPPLETALI$M

Tech Giants Sprint Ahead While Apple Walks on AI

  • Apple's progress in artificial intelligence is described as cautious and incremental, lagging behind rivals such as Google, Microsoft, and Samsung who have aggressively integrated LLMs and generative AI.

  • Siri is highlighted as a central example of Apple's AI struggles, with former employees indicating a preference for incremental changes over a complete rebuild, leading to a slow evolution.

  • The article suggests that Apple's future success depends on its ability to embrace agility and adapt quickly to the rapidly changing AI landscape, rather than maintaining its traditional cautious refinement.

Apple’s position in the rapidly evolving artificial intelligence landscape is increasingly precarious.

While rivals such as Google, Microsoft and even Samsung have surged ahead by integrating large language models (LLMs) and generative AI into their products, Apple’s progress has been notably cautious and incremental.

Commentators and insiders alike question whether Apple is losing the race to harness one of the most critical technology revolutions of the decade.

“I’m massively bearish on it (Apple) long term”, Dan Niles, founder of Niles Investment Management, told the Master Investor podcast, hosted by Wilfred Frost. “They are so far behind on AI, it’s not even funny”.

Climbing a hill, while others sprint

At the centre of Apple’s AI struggle is Siri. Intended to become a conversational assistant powered by large language models (LLMs), its evolution has spluttered.

Former Apple employees describe attempts to integrate AI via “climbing the hill” – incremental changes atop legacy systems – rather than rebuilding from scratch.

As one former exec told the Financial Times: “It was obvious that you were not going to revamp Siri by doing what executives called ‘climbing the hill.’?It’s clear that they stumbled.”

Apple’s annual developer event in early June reflected this caution. Instead of unveiling bold AI advances, the focus shifted to software tweaks and interface updates.

Analysts such as Craig?Moffett warned Apple would “be much more cautious about overpromising and will refrain from showing features that aren’t yet ready for prime time.”

Even Tim?Cook admitted: “It’s just taking a bit longer than we thought… But we are making progress, and we’re extremely excited to get the more personal Siri features out there.”

But this measured tone fell flat against competitors like Google and Microsoft, who have embedded AI more aggressively into search, productivity apps, and hardware.

Performance under scrutiny

Apple’s AI travels at a stately pace in a fast-moving race.

As Niles pointed out, Apple dedicates less than three per cent of revenue to capex and only eight per cent to R&D – well behind peers such as Microsoft (around 12 per cent) and Meta (25 per cent).

Despite commanding a premium market valuation – a high?20s PE compared with broader S&P 500 multiples in the low?20s – Apple’s AI delays and competitive pressures offer little margin for error.

Apple also grapples with external challenges: a 20 per cent drop in its stock this year, regulatory scrutiny of its services division (with gross margins near 74 per cent), and rising tariff risks amid US–China trade tensions.

As Forrester analyst Thomas?Husson noted: “The trade war and uncertainty linked to tariff policy is of much more concern today for Apple’s business than the perception that Apple is lagging behind on AI innovation.”

The Darwinian edge

Niles frames the dilemma through the lens of Darwin.

“The number one thing, especially if you’re a technology investor, but just an investor in general, is what Charles Darwin said… it’s not the strongest of the species that survive, nor the most intelligent, but the one most adaptable to change”, he said.

Apple’s success may now depend on whether it can abandon its perfectionist pace and embrace agility.

As AI reshapes tech at breakneck speed, Apple faces a stark choice – to cling to its legacy model of cautious refinement, or sprint to catch up with rivals rewriting the rules of computing.

By City AM 

Friday, June 13, 2025

CAPPLETALI$M

Foxconn sends 97% of India iPhone exports to U.S. as Apple tackles Trump’s tariffs

By Reuters
June 13, 2025 

An Apple iPhone XR is held at the Steve Jobs Theater after an event to announce new products, in Cupertino, Calif. (AP Photo/Marcio Jose Sanchez, File)

NEW DELHI — Nearly all the iPhones exported by Foxconn from India went to the United States between March and May, customs data showed, far above the 2024 average of 50 per cent and a clear sign of Apple’s efforts to bypass high U.S. tariffs imposed on China.

The numbers, being reported by Reuters for the first time, show Apple has realigned its India exports to almost exclusively serve the U.S. market, when previously the devices were more widely distributed to countries including the Netherlands, the Czech Republic and Britain.

During March-May, Foxconn exported iPhones worth US$3.2 billion from India, with an average 97 per cent shipped to the United States, compared to a 2024 average of 50.3 per cent, according to commercially available customs data seen by Reuters.Latest news & updates on tariffs and the trade war here


India iPhone shipments by Foxconn to the United States in May 2025 were worth nearly US$1 billion, the second-highest ever after the record US$1.3 billion worth of devices shipped in March, the data showed.

Apple declined to comment, while Foxconn did not respond to a Reuters request for comment.

U.S. President Donald Trump on Wednesday said China will face 55 per cent tariffs after the two countries agreed on a plan, subject to both leaders’ approval, to ease levies that had reached triple digits.

India is subject, like most U.S trading partners, to a baseline 10 per cent tariff and is trying to negotiate an agreement to avert a 26 per cent “reciprocal” levy that Trump announced and then paused in April.

Apple’s increased production in India drew a strong rebuke from Trump in May. “We are not interested in you building in India, India can take care of themselves, they are doing very well, we want you to build here,” Trump recalled telling CEO Tim Cook.

In the first five months of this year, Foxconn has already sent iPhones worth US$4.4 billion to the U.S. from India, compared to US$3.7 billion in the whole of 2024.

Apple has been taking steps to speed up production from India to bypass tariffs, which would make phones shipped from China to the U.S. much more expensive. In March, it chartered planes to transport iPhone 13, 14, 16 and 16e models worth roughly US$2 billion to the United States.

Apple has also lobbied Indian airport authorities to cut the time needed to clear customs at Chennai airport in the southern state of Tamil Nadu from 30 hours to six hours, Reuters has reported. The airport is a key hub for iPhone exports.

“We expect made-in-India iPhones to account for 25 per cent to 30 per cent of global iPhone shipments in 2025, as compared to 18 per cent in 2024,” said Prachir Singh, senior analyst at Counterpoint Research.

Tata Electronics, the other smaller Apple iPhone supplier in India, on average shipped nearly 86 per cent of its iPhone production to the U.S. during March and April, customs data showed. Its May data was not available.Latest updates on investing here

The company, part of India’s Tata Group, started exporting iPhones only in July 2024, and only 52 per cent of its shipments went to U.S. during 2024, the data showed.


Tata declined to comment on the numbers.

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi has in recent years promoted India as a smartphone manufacturing hub, but high duties on importing mobile phone components compared to many other countries means it is still expensive to produce the devices in India.

Apple has historically sold more than 60 million iPhones in the U.S. each year, with roughly 80 per cent made in China.

---

Reporting by Aditya Kalra and Munsif Vengattil; Editing by Kate Mayberry and Rachna Uppal.