Apple: iPhone hamster purchases give thrust, but the customs costs are high

Previous smartphone purchases because of the US tariffs on imports have given Apple a surprisingly strong quarter of the quarter. The number of iPhones used had reached a record high at the start of the year, said CEO Tim Cook of the Reuters news agency on Thursday. “This applies to all regions.” However, because of the uncertainty of investors about the long-term consequences of US customs policy for the group, Apple shares in the after-market business of Wall Street stipulated a good two percent.

Apple is one of the potentially largest suffering of the erratic policy of US President Donald Trump because the group has the lion’s share of its iPhones manufactured in China. Cook put the additional costs for his company to $ 900 million in the current quarter, provided the amount of the tariffs does not change. Cook did not want to make a forecast for further quarters. He assumes that the majority of the iPhones determined for the United States will be manufactured in India instead of China in the future.

So far, the most iPhones in China are by far. Trump imposed tariffs of 145 percent for goods from China – but then temporarily exposed it to electronics such as smartphones and laptops. But this only applies temporarily. “The tariffs are the sword of the Damocles for Apple – dangerous, dangerous and politically charged,” said Eric Schiffer, head of the financial investor Patriarch Organization. For this reason, Apple has lost around $ 600 billion in market capitalization and the Krone as the most valuable market value of the world since the beginning of the year.

The question now is whether Apple will pass the higher costs onto the customers or accept lower margins, analyst Jacob Bourne said from the market research company Emarketer. Experts assume that the group wants to bring some of the higher expenses for the shift in iPhone production to India through lower prices for supply parts. The group will want to reduce the increase in end customer prices to a minimum in order not to fall back on the competition.

Apple is hesitant when introducing new AI functions, which is why technology-savvy customers in particular migrate. The Apple voice assistant Siri should only enjoy artificial intelligence (AI) next year.

In the past quarter, the US company sold $ 46.84 billion in volume. The debut of the entry -level model iPhone 16E made a positive impact, emphasized company boss Cook. The group sales were $ 95.36 billion and the profit was $ 1.65 per share. On this basis, the company plans to increase the dividend by four percent to $ 0.26 per share. It also wants to buy back further $ 100 billion shares.

On the hard -fought Chinese market, things also went better than expected. There Apple made $ 16 billion. According to the IDC, the iPhone sales in the People’s Republic declined by nine percent at the beginning of the year. This was the seventh quarter with a decline in a row. The local rival Huawei and Xiaomi, on the other hand, posted above -average growth of ten or almost 14 percent in a growing overall market.