Apple stock slips as John Ternus flags memory-cost squeeze

John Ternus's first earnings call came after two months in which he mostly unveiled hardware, including the foldable iPhone Duo at his first public event in early September. The call marked his introduction to Wall Street, and he shared the stage with CFO Kevan Parekh and COO Sabih Khan, who Apple said would join earnings calls moving forward — something the company hasn't done for years.

The results themselves were strong by some measures: September iPhone sales set a record, and sales in Greater China jumped 21% year-over-year, though that sum was $1 billion short of Wall Street targets. The pressure sits in the cost line. Apple said its September-quarter margin of 47.9% included an approximately one-percentage-point boost from tariff refunds, and it is offsetting surging memory chip prices by raising its own prices. Supply constraints, meanwhile, have made it difficult to gauge the scale of iPhone Duo sales, and some units with cracked screens are being replaced.

Investors also pressed on the AI story. Ternus described Siri as 'primarily request-based today,' and analysts have said the assistant lags well behind leading chatbots from OpenAI and Anthropic as well as personalized agents from Meta. Apple instead pointed to its installed base surpassing 2.5 billion devices, and said usage limits will apply to AI features that do not run locally while iCloud storage tiers evolve.