Apple managed to secure 47% of the global "premium" smartphone market during the March quarter, but falling iPhone shipments helped bring down the segment's overall performance and make Samsung more prominent.
A special team within Apple has been tasked with investigating the costs of moving between 15% and 30% of iPhone, iPad and AirPod to other countries in order to reduce the impact of US/China tariffs.
Investor concerns about Apple's fortunes in China are "somewhat overblown," analysts from JP Morgan suggest, with shareholders also accused of failing to see the potential revenue generation of Apple's Services arm.
Foxconn has told investors that it has the capacity to produce iPhones for the American market without using its Chinese facilities, potentially skirting possible US/China trade tariffs.
Apple CEO Tim Cook in a CBS Evening News interview aired Tuesday touched on hot-button issues like the U.S.-China trade war, saying his company has not yet been impacted by the international scrum. He also commented on recent scrutiny of Apple's outsized presence in the tech sector, its efforts to curb so-called device addiction and more.
China's Ministry of Commerce has floated a retaliation plan intended to punish companies complying with the Trump Administration's Entity List ban on doing business with Huawei. That could have a profound impact on two of the largest software platforms licensed in China: Android and Windows, as well as broadly-licensed silicon intellectual property from ARM and Qualcomm.
Despite the U.S.-China trade war, and loud anti-Apple sentiment on Chinese media, the iPhone is still in demand in China, according to a survey of purchase intent in the country.
Huawei on Tuesday night petitioned for summary judgment in a lawsuit against the 2019 National Defense Authorization Act, which blocked U.S. government agencies from buying its products.
According to a wide variety of analysts following Apple, the Trump Administration's trade war with China and its Entity Listing of Huawei is maybe somewhat bad for the largest Android producer in China—and perhaps even for Android, given that it has now lost its second largest licensee globally—but it's mostly just bad news for Apple, because both the state and people of China are going to respond by shunning Apple's products. That's wrong, here's why.
Apple will be making cuts to production for its older iPhone models in the third quarter, Rosenblatt Securities predicts, but while the 2019 iPhone manufacturing effort is thought to be on schedule, the analysts don't believe market share will be maintained in China due to the turbulent trade relations with the United States.
While Huawei is going to take a giant hit worldwide from US sanctions, Apple in China will likely see a drop in shipments for 2019, resulting in sales less than half the levels seen at its peak in 2015, says JP Morgan.
Apple could face serious "collateral damage" from the Trump administration's bans against Huawei, even if iPhone shipments seem to be on the rebound in the short term, Cowen analysts said on Tuesday.
The ongoing trade tensions between the United States and China has prompted analysts at Citi to cut their forecast for Apple's earnings in the second half of 2019, citing the belief unrest by Chinese consumers will result in lower iPhone demand in the country.
Compounding Huawei's woes, the Chinese company has been removed not just from the Wi-Fi Alliance, and RAM spec controller JEDEC, but also from the SD Association, preventing it from offering official SD/microSD support in future devices.
A bipartisan group of U.S. senators have proposed a bill that would hand $700 million in grants to rural telecom providers to cover the cost of stripping Huawei and ZTE gear from their networks.
A Chinese student pleaded guilty in Oregon on Wednesday to one count of trafficking counterfeit iPhones, which he used to dupe Apple into giving him real units for sale in China.
Chip designer ARM is reportedly cutting off business with Huawei, a move that could potentially cripple the Chinese smartphone maker on top of the existing U.S. restrictions.
Though there's no sign of such action on the horizon, a Chinese ban on Apple business would decimate the company, knocking 29% percent off earnings, according to a Goldman Sachs analyst.
A Chinese diplomat, normally a vocal backer of government policies, was recently caught using Twitter for iPhone to defend Huawei and attack Apple and U.S. President Donald Trump.
Apple and the HomePod remain a marginal factor in the global smartspeaker market, not even in the top five brands, according to new research estimates.
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Roger Fingas
William Gallagher
Malcolm Owen
Mikey Campbell
Daniel Eran Dilger
Amber Neely
