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    Apple quarterly earnings beat Wall Street expectations amid Trump trade policy chaos

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    Apple’s second-quarter financials came in slightly higher than Wall Street’s expectations on Thursday.The tech giant reported revenue of $95.4bn, up more than 4% over last year, and earnings-per-share of $1.65 per share, up more than 7%. Analysts had predicted revenue of $94.5bn and earnings of $1.62. The company, worth $3.2tn, has beaten Wall Street’s expectations for the previous four quarters.Investors have been keeping their eyes on Apple as it prepared to report its financial results . The tech giant has been working to calm nervous analysts after Donald Trump levied sweeping tariffs on countries around the world that are likely to complicate supply chains for consumer electronics. Since the beginning of the year, Apple’s stock has slumped 16%.In early after-hours trading, the company’s stock dropped by more than 5%, likely due to its services division reporting revenue that missed Wall Street’s expectations, despite growth over last year. The division covers iCloud subscriptions and revenue from various licensing deals. Sales in China also missed estimates.Apple’s CEO, Tim Cook, remained positive, however, saying that the company was reporting “strong quarterly results, including double-digit growth in Services”.The iPhone maker is heavily reliant on Chinese manufacturing for its phones, tablets and laptops. Days after Trump instituted soaring tariffs on China, at one point as high as 245%, the president said he would make an exception for consumer electronics.Cook spoke to senior White House officials around this time, according to the Washington Post. It was after these conversations that Trump announced his exception for consumer electronics. Apple’s stock rose 7% in the days after the announcement.However, it is unclear how lasting the reprieve may be. Howard Lutnick, the US commerce secretary, has called the exemption “temporary”, and even Trump later said on social media that there’s been no “exception”.The president has repeatedly said he wants to see more manufacturing in the US. In February, he met with Cook to discuss investing in US manufacturing. “He’s going to start building,” Trump said after the meeting. “Very big numbers – you have to speak to him. I assume they’re going to announce it at some point.”JP Morgan estimates costs would skyrocket for Apple if it moves production to the US, saying in a note this week that it could “drive a 30% price increase in the near-term, assuming a 20% tariff on China”. JP Morgan and other analysts have said Apple could continue to move more of its manufacturing to India, which only faces a 10% tariff.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionApple chartered jets to airlift some $2bn worth of iPhones from India to the US earlier this month to boost inventory in anticipation of price hikes from Trump’s tariffs and panic-buying by worried consumers. This comes as investors have expressed concerned about decreasing iPhone sales in China, the world’s biggest smartphone market. During its last earnings in January, Apple reported that iPhone sales fell by 11.1% in China in the first quarter and missed Wall Street’s expectations for iPhone revenue.In the short term, however, analysts say the tariff confusion could benefit Apple with people panic-buying its products in fear that prices will rise. “What remains to be seen in the longer term is how much of any increased cost will be passed on to consumers,” said Dipanjan Chatterjee, principal analyst for Forrester. “And if [consumers] will absorb these price increases without pulling back on demand for Apple products.” More

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      How Google’s Antitrust Case Could Upend the A.I. Race

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      A federal judge issued a landmark ruling last year, saying that Google had become a monopolist in internet search. But in a hearing that began last week to figure out how to fix the problem, the emphasis has frequently landed on a different technology, artificial intelligence.In U.S. District Court in Washington last week, a Justice Department lawyer argued that Google could use its search monopoly to become the dominant player in A.I. Google executives disclosed internal discussions about expanding the reach of Gemini, the company’s A.I. chatbot. And executives at rival A.I. companies said that Google’s power was an obstacle to their success.On Wednesday, the first substantial question posed to Google’s chief executive, Sundar Pichai, after he took the stand was also about A.I. Throughout his 90-minute testimony, the subject came up more than two dozen times.“I think it’s one of the most dynamic moments in the industry,” said Mr. Pichai. “I’ve seen users’ home screens with, like, seven to nine applications of chatbots which they are trying and playing and training with.”An antitrust lawsuit about the past has effectively turned into a fight about the future, as the government and Google face off over proposed changes to the tech giant’s business that could shift the course of the A.I. race.For more than 20 years, Google’s search engine dominated the way people got answers online. Now the federal court is in essence grappling with whether the Silicon Valley giant will dominate the next era of how people get information on the internet, as consumers turn to a new crop of A.I. chatbots to answer questions, find solutions to their problems and learn about the world.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Trump Tariffs Could Raise iPhone Prices, But Affordable Options Remain

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      Even if gadget prices surge, we have plenty of cheaper options, like buying last year’s phone model instead of the latest and greatest.On Friday, amid a tariff-induced frenzy that drove hordes of consumers to panic-buy iPhones, President Trump announced a tariff exemption on electronics like smartphones and computers. For a moment, widespread anxiety about a potential $2,000 iPhone dissipated.But two days later, the Trump administration said smartphones and computers were likely to be hit with new tariffs targeting semiconductors, or chips. More expensive iPhones could come after all! Talk about whiplash.Don’t panic. Even if tariffs did cause the iPhone’s price to surge, we would have plenty of cheaper options, like buying last year’s phone model instead of the latest and greatest.The most important lesson we can learn from the turmoil: The only consistent way to save money on tech is to use devices for as long as possible, which requires maintaining them as you would a car, and upgrading only when you must.“Buy the best and drive it into the ground,” said Ramit Sethi, a personal finance expert. “Holding that item for longer will bring down the overall cost of ownership.”There remains lots of uncertainty around future costs of tech hardware in general. Nintendo this month canceled plans to start taking orders for its game console, the $450 Nintendo Switch 2, to evaluate the impact of tariffs on pricing and availability. Costs of some accessories, like phone chargers, power bricks and cases, have already risen on Amazon.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Trump warns exemptions on smartphones, electronics will be short-lived, promises future tariffs

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      The exemption of smartphones, laptops and other electronic products from import tariffs on China will be short-lived, top US officials have said, with Donald Trump warning that no one was “getting off the hook.”“There was no Tariff ‘exception’, Trump said in a social media post on Sunday. “These products are subject to the existing 20% Fentanyl Tariffs, and they are just moving to a different Tariff ‘bucket.’”In the post on his Truth Social platform, Trump promised to launch a national security trade investigation into the semiconductor sector and the “whole electronics supply chain”.“We will not be held hostage by other Countries, especially hostile trading Nations like China,” he added.The White House had announced on Friday the exclusion of some electronic products from steep reciprocal tariffs on China. US stock markets were expected to stage a recovery after the announcement. Shares in Apple and chip maker Nvidia were on course to soar after tariffs on their products imported into the US were lifted for 90 days.China’s commerce ministry said the exemption demonstrated the US taking “a small step toward correcting its erroneous unilateral practice of ‘reciprocal tariffs’,” and insisted Washington cancel the whole tariff regime.Zhang Li, president of the China Center for Information Industry Development, told state media outlet, China Daily, that the exemptions proved “how important China is to major US tech companies that rely heavily on the country for manufacturing and innovation”.However, Trump’s commerce secretary, Howard Lutnick, said on Sunday that critical technology products from China would face separate new duties along with semiconductors within the next two months.Lutnick said Trump would enact “a special focus-type of tariff” on smartphones, computers and other electronics products in a month or two, alongside sectoral tariffs targeting semiconductors and pharmaceuticals. The new duties would fall outside Trump’s so-called reciprocal tariffs on China, he said.“He’s saying they’re exempt from the reciprocal tariffs, but they’re included in the semiconductor tariffs, which are coming in probably a month or two,” Lutnick said in an interview on ABC, predicting that the levies would bring production of those products to the United States. “These are things that are national security, that we need to be made in America.”The world’s two largest economies have been locked in a fast-moving game of brinkmanship since Trump launched a global tariff assault that particularly targeted Chinese imports. China’s leader Xi Jinping said on Monday that protectionism “leads nowhere” and that a trade war would have “no winners”.Tit-for-tat exchanges have seen US levies imposed on China rise to 145%, and Beijing setting a retaliatory 125% levy on US imports. On Friday Beijing said it would ignore any future raises in tariffs by Trump, as they were already so high that there was “no market acceptance for US goods” in China.On Monday a spokesperson for China’s Customs agency said the country’s exports were facing a complex and severe external situation but “the sky will not fall”. They said China’s domestic demand was broad, and they were building a diversified market.Trump’s back-and-forth on tariffs has triggered the wildest swings on Wall Street since the Covid pandemic of 2020. The benchmark Standard & Poor’s 500 index is down more than 10% since Trump took office on 20 January.After announcing sweeping import taxes on dozens of trade partners, Trump abruptly issued a 90-day pause for most of them. China was excluded from the reprieve.The fallout from Trump’s tariffs – and subsequent whiplash policy reversals – sent shock waves through the US economy, with investors dumping government bonds, the dollar tumbling and consumer confidence plunging.US senator Elizabeth Warren, a Democrat, criticised the latest revision to Trump’s tariff plan, which economists have warned could dent economic growth and fuel inflation.“There is no tariff policy – only chaos and corruption,” Warren said on ABC’s “This Week,” speaking before Trump’s latest post on social media.China has sought to strengthen ties with neighbouring countries amid the escalating trade war. Xi will visit Vietnam on Monday as he begins a tour of south-east Asia.With Reuters and Agence France-Presse More

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      US stock markets expected to recover after Trump drops tariffs on mobiles

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      US stock markets were expected to stage a recovery on Monday after Donald Trump excluded imports of smartphones and laptops from his tariff regime late on Friday night.Shares in Apple and chip maker Nvidia were on course to soar after tariffs on their products imported into the US were lifted for 90 days.The temporary reprieve was widely seen as a climbdown after pressure from Republican leaders concerned that the soaring cost of smartphones would spark a voter backlash. US retailers import about 80% of all smartphones, many of them from China, which Trump has slapped with tariffs totalling 145%.US Customs and Border Protection said items like laptops, hard drives, smartphones, flat-panel monitors and some chips would qualify for the exemption. Vital machines made outside the US that are used to make semiconductors were also excluded.It means these products will avoid the China tariff and the 10% baseline tariffs applied on other countries caught by the new regime.Speaking on Air Force One on Saturday evening, Trump said he would be more specific about the latest exemption rules on Monday. “We’ve been making a lot of money,” he said. “It’s been the other way around. Other countries, in particular China was making a lot of money.”It is not clear how long the exemption will last or whether separate tariffs will be negotiated on the specific products.China has responded with a tariff on all US exports of 125%. Beijing said at the weekend that the reprieve for smartphones was a “small step” toward easing the trade fight between the world’s two biggest economies.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionHowever, the US commerce secretary, Howard Lutnick, said the reprieve was likely to be lifted in 90 days and reiterated Trump’s longstanding plan to apply a different, specific levy to the sector.Speaking on NBC, he said: “All those products are going to come under semiconductors, and they’re going to have a special focus-type of tariff to make sure that those products get reshored. We can’t be relying on China for fundamental things that we need.”Lutnick dismissed interpretations of Trump’s reprieve that argued it reflected the president’s realisation that his China tariffs were unlikely to shift more manufacturing of smartphones, computers and other gadgets to the US in the near future.On Sunday Trump warned that no country would be getting “off the hook” on his punishing tariffs, again singling out China for criticism. “NOBODY is getting ‘off the hook’ for the unfair Trade Balances,” Trump wrote in a post on his Truth Social platform. “Especially not China which, by far, treats us the worst!”Apple has spent decades building up a finely tuned supply chain in east Asia, including inside China. The firm has pledged to move some facilities back to the US over the next four years, which will cost it $500bn, including constructing a giant factory in Texas for artificial intelligence servers but was expecting to retain much of its international network as it expands its sales.Trump’s move at the start of April to impose tariffs on imports to the US battered the stocks of tech’s magnificent seven – Apple, Microsoft, Nvidia, Amazon, Tesla, Google parent Alphabet and Facebook parent Meta Platforms.At one point, they lost $2.1tn, or 14% of their value, from 2 April. Shares have recovered since last Wednesday after Trump paused the tariffs except on China, allowing tech firms to use India and other conduits to import smartphones. More

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      How Do the iPhone 16E and Google Pixel 9A Compare to More Expensive Models?

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      With all the talk about tariffs driving up costs, the word “cheaper” should bring comfort to just about anyone. That’s why I’m delighted to share that the cheaper smartphone from Google has arrived, a few months after Apple released a somewhat cheaper entry-level iPhone — and that both products are very good.Google this week released the Pixel 9a, the $500 sibling of its $800 flagship smartphone, the Pixel 9. It competes directly with the $600 iPhone 16e released in February, the cheaper version of Apple’s $800 iPhone 16.Both of the new phones have the staples that people care most about — great cameras, nice screens, zippy speeds, modern software and long battery life. To cut costs, they omit some fancier extras, like advanced camera features.Is it a wise idea to save some bucks, or better to spend more on the fancier phones? To find out, I strapped on a fanny pack and carried all four phones with me for the last week to run tests.The upshot: As is often the case, you get what you pay for. The $800 phones are slightly better in terms of features and performance than the cheaper versions, and the $600 iPhone is faster and has a better camera than the $500 Pixel.But more important, the cheaper Pixel and iPhone were nearly indistinguishable from their $800 counterparts in several of my tests. In some cases, like battery life, the cheaper phones were even better.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      SoftBank to Buy Silicon Valley Chip Start-Up Ampere for $6.5 Billion

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      The move is a bet that Ampere’s chips can begin playing a significant role in data centers for creating artificial intelligence.SoftBank said on Wednesday that it had agreed to pay $6.5 billion for the Silicon Valley chip start-up Ampere Computing, doubling down on a bet that technology that originated in smartphones will come to dominate the world’s data centers.The deal also reflects the Japanese conglomerate’s belief that Ampere’s chips can begin to play a significant role in artificial intelligence, where Nvidia has reaped the most rewards so far.Ampere was founded eight years ago to sell chips for data centers based on technology from Arm Holdings, a British company that licenses chip designs that have powered nearly all mobile phones. SoftBank, which bought Arm in 2016, has been working to have chips based on Arm technology used more widely and for different tasks.“The future of artificial superintelligence requires breakthrough computing power,” Masayoshi Son, SoftBank’s chairman and chief executive, said in prepared remarks. “Ampere’s expertise in semiconductors and high-performance computing will help accelerate this vision, and deepens our commitment to A.I. innovation in the United States.”SoftBank said it would operate Ampere as a wholly owned subsidiary under its own name.The sale comes amid a flurry of deals and shifting alliances driven by a furious demand for the chips used to power A.I. applications such as OpenAI’s ChatGPT. SoftBank, in particular, has announced a series of transactions in a bid to play a bigger role in the field.In its splashiest move to date, Mr. Son joined President Trump in January to announce an initiative called Stargate, alongside Sam Altman, OpenAI’s chief, and Larry Ellison, chairman and founder of the software maker Oracle, which is Ampere’s largest investor and customer.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      HP to Buy Humane, Maker of the Ai Pin, for $116 Million

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      Humane, which marketed its Ai Pin as the next big thing after smartphones, had raised $240 million from investors, including OpenAI’s Sam Altman. The pin will be discontinued.Humane, the ambitious start-up behind the Ai Pin device that aimed to one day replace smartphones, agreed to sell parts of its business to HP for $116 million, the companies said on Tuesday.HP said it planned to acquire Humane’s “A.I. capabilities,” including its software platform, intellectual property, patents and some employees. The Ai Pin will be shut down, Humane said in a message to customers.The deal caps a downfall for the high-flying start-up, which heavily promoted the $699 pin with ads, a TED Talk and at Paris Fashion Week with supermodels. Humane raised $240 million in funding from high-profile investors, including Marc Benioff, the chief executive of Salesforce, and his counterpart at OpenAI, Sam Altman, valuing the company at $850 million before it released a product.Humane was created by Imran Chaudhri and Bethany Bongiorno, husband-and-wife founders who previously worked at Apple. The pair envisioned a wearable device that people would clip to their clothes and interact with using voice commands and a laser display projected onto their hand. The idea was to cut down on time spent staring at smartphone screens.Bethany Bongiorno and Imran Chaudhri at Humane’s office in San Francisco in 2023.Kelsey McClellan for The New York TimesBut the Ai Pin, which began shipping to customers last spring, was a flop.Reviewers criticized the product, with the A.I. software often giving wrong answers or taking a long time to respond, while the pin’s batteries sometimes overheated. Humane had hoped to sell 100,000 pins in its first year but got only around 10,000 orders. At one point, the company told customers to stop using their charging cases because of the fire risk.Last year, Humane hired an investment bank to sell itself, while also seeking new funding. The start-up sought a sale price of more than $1 billion.On Tuesday, a letter posted to Humane’s website said that the pins would no longer work at the end of this month and that customer data would be deleted. “Our business priorities have shifted,” the letter said.HP, which sells an estimated 53 million PCs a year, has said it wants to add A.I. capabilities to its laptops to make them more useful. Last year, HP worked with Microsoft to develop a line of A.I. computers called Copilot+ PCs.In its announcement, HP said it would use Humane’s technology to become a more “experience-led company.” Humane’s workers will be part of a new innovation lab called HP IQ, which will focus on “building an intelligent ecosystem across HP’s products and services.” Mr. Chaudhri and Ms. Bongiorno will join the company, as will the majority of the start-up’s employees, an HP spokeswoman said.“We are investing and innovating aggressively in new A.I.-powered capabilities and software,” said Enrique Lores, president and chief executive of HP, during a call with analysts in November. “We will focus on delivering a cutting-edge A.I.-powered tech.” More

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      Let’s Argue About Our Phones (and Tech in General)

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      More from our inbox:Excuse Me, but Who Are You Calling Stupid?Musk Has Seen ‘State Capture’ BeforeThe Autocrats’ Playbook221A/Getty ImagesTo the Editor:Re “The Only Phone You Need Is a Dumb One,” by August Lamm (Opinion guest essay, Feb. 2):Three cheers for Ms. Lamm, an anti-tech activist.I am a boomer who grew up meeting people face to face, talking with family members at the dinner table, playing outdoors, writing with a ballpoint pen and going to the library to get information. So it’s refreshing to see a young person striving to restore our basic sanity — our basic humanity, in fact — by encouraging us to dump harmful, unnecessary technology.We’re living in a dangerously dizzying time in which high tech threatens to end our very existence.Dennis QuickCharleston, S.C.To the Editor:August Lamm announces that she is “on a mission … to get people off their smartphones.” Why has she made it her mission to change the lives of strangers who have never asked for her intervention? Because “we’ve become so used to selecting partners on a sterile, simulated interface that we’ve lost the ability to make spontaneous, messy connections in real life.”But I often make spontaneous, messy connections in the real life of cyberspace, which lets me make these connections based on mutual interests and values rather than mere propinquity.The only opinion I need about how to live my social life is my own, supplemented by suggestions from friends who actually know something about me.Felicia Nimue AckermanProvidence, R.I.To the Editor:August Lamm is 29 years old, so she may be too young to know: Seventy years ago, everyone in the United States smoked, or at least it seemed that way. Today, far fewer Americans smoke. I suspect that social media is headed in the same direction.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More