Apple and Amazon defy expectations with latest results

Tech giants Apple and Amazon person defied manufacture predictions with better-than-expected fiscal results.

Apple's occurrence is mostly acknowledgment to record-breaking iPhone sales, portion Amazon's is down to unreality computing limb Amazon Web Services (AWS), successful spite of last week's outage which knocked retired thousands of websites.

AWS gross accelerated 20.2% to $33bn (almost £25bn), which CEO Andy Jassy said was a gait it hadn't seen since 2022. AWS accounts for 60% of Amazon's full operating income.

Cloud maturation has been a cardinal absorption for the institution successful the look of ever-growing unit from rivals Google and Microsoft, which besides reported gross leaps this week.

iPhone connected the charge

With Donald Trump introducing punishing tariffs connected India and China - the main manufacturing hubs for the iPhone - Apple's grounds gross has been adjacent much invited for brag Tim Cook.

The tariffs outgo Apple $1.1bn (£824m) during the past 4th and are expected to outgo different $1.4bn (just implicit £1bn) during the last 3 months of the year, but the caller iPhone 17 scope is simply a hit.

Consumers person been won implicit by a terms constituent that didn't stray supra past year's model, peculiarly successful the US and Europe, starring to income totalling $49bn (£36.1bn) during the July-September play - 6% up connected past year.

Global marketplace expert IDC says astir 59 cardinal iPhones were sold worldwide successful the July-September quarter, putting Apple 2nd down Samsung astatine 61.4 cardinal of their Android-powered phones.

Buoyed by the iPhone results, Apple earned $27.5bn (£21.4bn), oregon $1.85 per stock (£1.44), astir doubling its nett from a twelvemonth ago. Revenue climbed 8% from a twelvemonth agone to $102.5bn (£80bn).

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Wall Street analysts had been cautious astir some companies, and their tech rivals, due to the fact that of uncertainty caused by tariffs and whether concern successful AI has been overplayed.

While welcoming its latest results, Amazon has issued a cautious income outlook for the fiscal 4th quarter, citing continued Trump tariffs arsenic a imaginable bump successful the gross road.

Companies, including Amazon, are introducing AI into astir each facet of their operations successful hopes of reducing costs and boosting productivity. There person been tens of thousands of occupation losses astatine US tech firms this year.

On Wednesday, Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell said helium did not judge the AI roar was a speculative bubble similar the dot-com era, erstwhile galore companies were "ideas alternatively than businesses".

Today's AI leaders "actually person earnings," helium said.