30 January 2026
If you are covering Apple’s latest results, please find below a comment from Ben Barringer, head of technology research at Quilter Cheviot:
“Apple delivered a decent set of results, with some real positives to point to, but ultimately it comes with a cloud hanging over them. Really these results are a tale of three things. Firstly, iPhone sales have been strong, with growth up 23%. This is primarily being driven by the iPhone 17 and the fact that consumers are beginning to trade up from the last strong product release of the iPhone 12 and 13. Services, however, remain slow but there is content, such as Ted Lasso, on the way which should help bring demand.
“Secondly, Apple said its gross margin had increased by 100 basis points and guided it to increase during the year, but there is huge uncertainty given where the price of memory has gone of late. That is going to put pressure on Apple’s gross margin going forward, as the cost of memory rockets.
“And finally, as with all the tech stocks AI is what a lot of people care about and arguably Apple has stalled on this front following lacklustre take up of Apple Intelligence. It spoke about its partnership with Google and plans to revamp Siri, but as with anything Apple produces it will have a high bar for quality and security. We also worry about Apple's need for AI capacity if new AI Siri is successful. For investors there is better mega cap tech companies out there at the moment that are delivering on the AI hype.”
