Apple’s rotten, no-good first quarter

Apple is in the midst of what is basically a rotten, no-good year so far. The company is contending with a high-profile antitrust battle with the Department of Justice, plummeting iPhone sales in China, and another EU regulatory investigation.
Daniel Howley for Yahoo Finance:
‎

The company is also still facing a shortfall when it comes to generative AI capabilities. And while it’s widely expected to debut some kind of generative AI offering during its WWDC developer event on June 10, it’ll need to have quite an impressive showing if it’s going to catch up to its Big Tech rivals including Microsoft and Google.
All of that is hurting Apple’s stock price. Shares of the iPhone maker have fallen more than 7% since the start of the year and are up just 6.25% over the last 12 months. Shares of Microsoft, meanwhile, are up 14% year to date and 49% over the last 12 months. Google? Shares of the search giant are up 9% year to date and 43% in the last 12 months.
Apple’s latest headache came Tuesday, when Bloomberg, citing Chinese government data, reported that iPhone shipments fell 33% year over year in the country in February…
While Apple is certainly facing a slew of challenges, it’s far from down and out. It’s still the second-richest company in the world by market capitalization — behind Microsoft — and it’s sure to continue to sell millions of devices and services subscriptions throughout the year ahead.
Still, for the foreseeable future, Apple could be in for a bumpy ride.

Support MacDailyNews at no extra cost to you by using this link to shop at Amazon.
‎
MacDailyNews Take: As we wrote back in February:

Apple’s time a having a caretaker CEO to milk products and services conceived and created under Steve Jobs will, hopefully, draw to a close sooner than later.
Apple is clearly not as innovative as it was under Steve Jobs who even started the company’s work on Apple Watch and Apple Vision Pro, but the company — thanks to Jobs and Cook’s subsequent management of iterations of products and services conceived during Jobs’ tenure — now has more than enough money to make up for Cook’s lack of vision.
Tim’s not a product person, per se. – Steve Jobs
If Apple can manage to train its generative AI in an unbiased way – a big IF – Apple will be just fine in generative AI soon enough. The company has an install base of more than 2.2 billion active devices in the hands of the highest quality customers; even “good enough” generative AI will be just fine. Anything above and beyond that will just be icing on the cake!

Until it gets another visionary leader (fingers crossed; Apple’s history has shown – cough, Sculley, Spindler, cough – that the next CEO could be far, far worse than the very competent caretaker Cook), Apple can afford to miss things like generative AI – which they clearly did – and then use its huge war chest to catch up – which they’re doing right now (fun times and 80-hour weeks inside Apple Park!) – and, hopefully, surpass rivals (or at least be as good). Apple will very likely unveil their catch-up work within months (this June at WWDC 2024)… – MacDailyNews, February 14, 2024
‎
Please help support MacDailyNews. Click or tap here to support our independent tech blog. Thank you!
Support MacDailyNews at no extra cost to you by using this link to shop at Amazon.
The post Apple’s rotten, no-good first quarter appeared first on MacDailyNews.