Physical Address
304 North Cardinal St.
Dorchester Center, MA 02124
Tim Cook, CEO of Apple Inc., during the first day of in-store sales of Apple’s latest products at the Fifth Avenue Apple Store in New York, U.S., Friday, September 20, 2024.
Victor J. Azul | Bloomberg | fake images
Apple The stock closed down 4% on Thursday, its worst day since Aug. 5, following several reports of lackluster iPhone sales in China.
The iPhone maker’s share price is down nearly 12% from its most recent peak in December, and it is the worst performer of the seven largest tech stocks so far in 2025.
The drop comes after a report on Thursday from Canalys, a market research company, which suggested that Apple had fallen to third place in terms of smartphones sold in China in 2024, behind local manufacturers Vivo and Huawei.
Apple shipped 15% of the 284 million phones sold in China last year, according to the report, but that figure was down 17% year over year. Meanwhile, Vivo and Huawei experienced strong growth.
TSMC, a key Apple supplier, on Thursday reported a first-quarter smartphone sales forecast that suggested a sequential drop of nearly 6%. TSMC, which makes the core chips in Apple devices, attributed the drop to seasonality. TSMC said AI chips accounted for more than half of its revenue in the fourth quarter, displacing smartphones, which had been its biggest business.
Leading Apple supply chain analyst Ming-Chi Kuo on Monday wrote which expects iPhone shipments to decline 6% annually in the first half of 2025, with most of the drop occurring in the second quarter. Kuo wrote that he believes Apple Intelligence, the company’s artificial intelligence system that is not yet available in China, is not driving iPhone demand.
“There is no evidence of Apple Intelligence’s ability to benefit hardware replacement cycles or the services business,” Kuo wrote.
Apple reports its December quarter results on January 30.
LOOK: Apple corrects due to fundamentals, iPhone 17 updates expected, says Morgan Stanley’s Woodring
