Skip to content
MarketScale
‹ Back to IndustriesSoftware & Technology

Apple Sales Miss Estimates on Sluggish Economy, Supply Snags

(Bloomberg) — Apple Inc. reported a steeper sales decline in its holiday period than Wall Street feared, showing the toll of an economic slowdown and lingering supply snags. Revenue in the fiscal first quarter amounted to $117.2 billion, the company said in a statement Thursday. That compared with Wall Street projections of about $121.1 billion….

This story was produced through MarketScale. See how Software & Technology teams put it to work with Executive Thought Leadership.

By Software And Technology · AppleSmartphoneTech DeclineTechnology
Share
Apple Sales Miss Estimates on Sluggish Economy, Supply Snags

Key takeaways

01

reported a steeper sales decline in its holiday period than Wall Street feared, showing the toll of an economic slowdown and lingering supply snags.

02

Revenue in the fiscal first quarter amounted to $117.2 billion, the company said in a statement Thursday.

03

That compared with Wall Street projections of about $121.1 billion….

Get featured

Want to get featured in MarketScale Software & Technology?

Create a free MarketScale workspace and get your company's expertise featured across our Software & Technology coverage. No credit card, no demo required.

Request an invite

(Bloomberg) —

Apple Inc. reported a steeper sales decline in its holiday period than Wall Street feared, showing the toll of an economic slowdown and lingering supply snags.

Revenue in the fiscal first quarter amounted to $117.2 billion, the company said in a statement Thursday. That compared with Wall Street projections of about $121.1 billion. The shares fell in extended trading.

The results show that Apple hasn’t been able to dodge the tech slowdown afflicting many of its competitors. Demand for smartphones and computers has slumped in the past year, and Covid-19 restrictions in China added to Apple’s woes during the holiday sales period. Timing was another issue: The company didn’t launch new Macs and HomePods until recent weeks, missing the end of the first quarter.

Earnings came in at $1.88 per share, compared with an average estimate of $1.94 per share. The Cupertino, California-based technology giant didn’t provide a revenue outlook for the second quarter, continuing an approach it adopted at the start of the Covid pandemic in 2020.

Read more: How Apple timed the launch of its new Macs, HomePod

Apple shares had closed up 3.7% at $150.82 in New York. They have gained 16% this year.

Chief Executive Officer Tim Cook cited a “challenging environment” in the statement. “We remain focused on the long term,” he said.

Apple generated $65.8 billion from its flagship product, the iPhone, missing the estimate of $68.3 billion. That also represents a decline the $71.6 billion that the product brought in a year earlier. While the latest iPhone was a more significant leap than the previous version, the factories producing the popular Pro models in China were shuttered for several weeks during the quarter due to pandemic restrictions.

The company made $7.74 billion from the Mac, well short of the $9.7 billion estimate. That’s also a significant drop from $10.9 billion a year ago.

It was a tough year-over-year comparison given that Apple launched a revamped MacBook Pro line in the previous holiday period. This time around, it didn’t update the MacBook Pro and Mac mini models until the current quarter.

(Updates with product sales in seventh paragraph.)

By Mark Gurman

Your experts belong here

Every story in MarketScale Software & Technology starts with a company putting its solutions engineers, product teams, and customer engineers on the record. Buyers are already reading this topic. The only question is whose experts they find.

Buyers ask AI engines who to consider, and published expert answers are what those engines cite.

Get your team featuredSee how it works15 minutes, straight to a calendar.

About the author

SA
Software And Technology

Follow Software & Technology Insights

Get new expert content in your inbox.

Software & Technology: are you visible to AI?

Before they reach out, Software & Technology buyers ask AI engines which vendors to trust. See how AI describes your company today, and where competitors show up instead.

Free workspace

You just read one Software & Technology expert. Your company is full of them.

This article was produced through MarketScale. The same platform turns your solutions engineers, product teams, and customer engineers into the articles, video, and social content Software & Technology buyers are searching for. Create a free workspace and see it with your own people. No credit card, no demo required.

NPS +73 · 1,000+ creators · 38+ countries

What you get, free

Your own MarketScale Studio workspace
One video edit a month, on us
AI writing, editing, and publishing tools
In-platform coaching to learn the system

More Software & Technology Insights

AI agents are moving from chatbots to running workflows, and ops will feel it first

AI agents are moving from chatbots to running workflows, and ops will feel it first

Salesforce’s Winter ’27 release positions AI agents to run end-to-end workflows inside CRM and collaboration tools, including service case guidance, voice scheduling, and agent-driven commerce search, according to Salesforce. In parallel, NIST’s new AI Agent Standards Initiative is asking for industry input on AI agent security and is drafting guidance on software and AI agent identity and authorization, Federal News Network reported. On the infrastructure side, CoreWeave says it is unifying training, inference, observability, and reinforcement learning so autonomous agents can improve in production, while Cloudflare and Plume data highlighted by Cablefax show non-human traffic and AI agent requests rising sharply, creating measurable capacity and latency planning implications. The operational consequence is that “agent readiness” is becoming a joint program across app owners, security teams, and network operators, with identity, authorization, observability, and traffic management becoming gating items for scaling agents beyond pilots.

  • 01If AI agents are going to run workflows, the gating work shifts from prompt design to identity and authorization, NIST’s early initiative outputs are already centered there.
  • 02Agent traffic is not a rounding error: Cloudflare’s estimate that over half of internet traffic is non-human, plus Plume’s household-level data, is a planning signal for WAN, contact center voice, and Wi‑Fi policies.
  • 03The fastest path to better agents is increasingly “production learning,” CoreWeave’s closed-loop training-to-inference pitch, which raises the bar for observability and regression control in enterprise deployments.

Sep 1, 2026

Proptech money is clustering around ops automation, not new listing sites

Proptech money is clustering around ops automation, not new listing sites

In mid-2026, funding and product developments indicate a growing focus on operational automation tools in the proptech sector, rather than on new listing sites. AI agents and benchmarking tools are becoming increasingly significant for tasks such as leasing, collections, and managing portfolio KPIs.

  • 01Investment in proptech is increasingly directed towards operational automation rather than new listing sites.
  • 02AI agents and benchmarking tools are becoming vital in the management of leasing and collections.
  • 03Portfolio Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) are a critical focus area for new proptech solutions.

Aug 31, 2026

Better AI software is driving up spending on power, partners, and delivery

Better AI software is driving up spending on power, partners, and delivery

Enterprise AI is evolving from a features competition to a procurement challenge impacting software, partnerships, and data center supply chains. Companies are increasingly investing in power consumption, strategic partnerships, and delivery mechanisms to support AI advancements. The focus is shifting towards efficient resource allocation and supply chain management to optimize AI implementation.

  • 01Enterprise AI implementation is becoming more about procurement than features.
  • 02Investments in power consumption, partners, and delivery are on the rise for AI.
  • 03Focus is shifting towards optimizing supply chain management for AI advancements.

Aug 31, 2026

Explore More Software & Technology Insights

Read more expert perspectives from across Software & Technology.

Browse Software & Technology Hub

About the Expert

SA
Software And Technology

For B2B teams

Your experts could be publishing here

Stories like this one run on content MarketScale captures from real practitioners. See how your team's expertise becomes coverage in Software & Technology and beyond.

Book a 15-minute demo

Or call us. No forms required. We pick up. 214-945-2512