There’s a good chance the iPhone and other Apple products will be hit with tariffs in the Trump administration’s trade war with China. The president has repeatedly stated his simple solution: Make the iPhone in the United States.
But an analyst warns that moving assembly of Apple’s handsets to the U.S. would significantly increase their price.
Apple stock slid 1.9 percent in pre-market trading today, after President Donald Trump laid out plans for new tariffs to be placed on the iPhone.
Overall, AAPL is trading down 20 percent this month. This latest blow comes after six weeks of declines for Apple, which became the first publicly traded U.S. company to pass a $1 trillion valuation earlier this year.
Apple products have so far escaped the growing trade war between China and the Trump administration, but the grace period may be coming to an end soon. The president is getting ready to put tariffs on additional products being imported from China, and that specifically includes the iPhone.
The iPhone is a coveted totem of status in most parts of the world. In the United Arab Emirates, the wealthy elite buys them two at a time.
But to carry an iPhone in China means you’re less educated and trying to hide dire financial straits. The well-off prefer Huawei or Xiaomi smartphones.
This according to research conducted by the Shanghai firm Mobdata, which looked at income and education backgrounds of smartphone users.
The iPhone outsold Chinese rivals on Alibaba platforms during China’s Singles Day on November 11. Singles’ Day is a holiday in which people not in a relationship buy themselves gifts.
Alibaba, the e-commerce giant that is the equivalent of China’s Amazon, sold a record $30.8 billion in gross merchandise during the day. Apple’s position as number one mobile brand is therefore pretty darn impressive!
Apple just had its best September quarter of all-time and CEO Tim Cook couldn’t have sounded happier when he got on the phone with investors today. The company is heading into the holiday season with its best lineup ever and expects to set more records next quarter.
Investors did not seem to be too impressed with the results though. Apple’s stock price dropped from $222.22 to as low as $206 in after-hours training. Despite Wall Street’s worries about Apple, there was plenty of achievements for Tim Cook and Luca Maestri to boast about on today’s call.
There were the biggest revelations from today’s call:
Over the past several years, new Apple Stores have been opening all over China — but the bloom might be off the rose.
According to a new report, Apple’s Chinese retail stores have been struggling with slowing growth. Despite recently opening its 50th store in greater China, Apple is facing challenges on a number of fronts. And they’re causing it to rethink its strategy as a result.
It’s just the news you probably didn’t want to hear before a new Apple keynote event: Your Apple products could be about to get even pricier.
The reason? The Trump administration is reportedly considering tariffs on, “all remaining Chinese imports” by early December. While Apple has so far gotten away unscathed in the burgeoning U.S.-China trade war, this would be all but guaranteed to affect Apple’s business — since the majority of its products are manufactured in China.
Apple and Amazon are already starting to make retaliatory moves on Bloomberg Businessweek for its claims that the two companies’ servers were hacked by China.
Amazon pulled its Q4 ads from Bloomberg’s website, cutting off significant ad revenue. Meanwhile, Apple has decided to give Bloomberg the old Gizmodo treatment — by banning the company from next week’s “There’s More in the Making” event.
President Donald Trump has a serious iPhone problem, and it could be huge issue for U.S. national security.
Despite being warned by security advisers, Trump continues to use an unsecured iPhone to talk with friends, colleagues and business partners — and China and Russia could be listening in on his calls.
Super Micro Computer, the manufacturer of technology accused by Bloomberg of containing Chinese spy chips, has said that it will carry out a review of its own hardware.
This isn’t any kind of admission on its part, however. In a letter to customers, the firm noted how, “Despite the lack of any proof that a malicious hardware chip exists, we are undertaking a complicated and time-consuming review to further address the article.”
After Apple acknowledged that a small number of its users in China had their iCloud accounts accounts hacked through a phishing scam, a Chinese consumer watchdog thinks the company should pay up.
The China Consumer Association said in a statement that Apple should pay compensation to those affected. Some of those people caught up in the scam lost money since their Apple IDs were used by thieves to take money from paired mobile payment services.
The tech world has been rocked by allegations that companies, including Apple and Amazon, were sold data servers compromised by Chinese spies. However, a senior cyber security advisor to the National Security Agency says that no one he knows of has found any sign of this.
The long wait for new iPad Pros may be nearly over if a recent filing by Apple in Asia is any indication that Apple has finalized its product lineup.
This week it was discovered that Apple just registered three new iPad models with China’s Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT). Apple also registered a new Bluetooth device with MIIT, which could be a new Apple Pencil for the iPads.
The iPhone XR is expected to enjoy a strong start in China later this month as a result of the lack of innovation from local brands and weakening demand for their devices, according to one reliable analyst.
Apple’s new handset, which will start at $749 in the U.S., could see bigger demand than last year’s iPhone 8 lineup.
Hackers in China have used stolen Apple IDs to make off with cash from customers’ Alipay and Tencent accounts, two popular Chinese mobile payments service.
In a post on Weibo, Alipay said that it has contacted Apple to determine the exact details of the breach. It also warned that users who have linked their Apple IDs to mobile payment services should lower their transaction limits. Tencent has also gotten in contact with Apple.
Tim Cook is in China, visiting Shanghai to promote Apple Watch, pay a trip to one of one of the local Apple Stores, and meet with developers and Apple users.
Cook marked the trip by posting on his official Weibo account, the microblogging account that acts as China’s version of Twitter. While he is upbeat about meeting with Chinese fans, however, the visit comes at a tough time — with a burgeoning trade war with the U.S. and questionable claims about Chinese spy chips allegedly used by Apple.
One of the sources named in Bloomberg‘s recent report on alleged Chinese spy chips in motherboards used by Apple and other companies has cast doubts on the story.
Speaking on a podcast published this week, security researcher Joe Fitzpatrick said that the hardware implant approach described “doesn’t make sense.”
There are plenty of stories published about Apple that I’m sure it would rather not floating around the internet. But when it is accused of having had its motherboards — along with those used by dozens of other companies — breached by Chinese spy chips, it springs into action.
That’s what Apple did over the weekend when it told Congress that there is absolutely no evidence that it has been the victim of a sophisticated attack on its supply chain. This is what had been alleged in a recent article by Bloomberg BusinessWeek.
The Department of Homeland Security says that it believes Apple’s denial of claims that Chinese spies had inserted malicious chips into its computer system. Based on current evidence, at least.
The U.K.’s national cyber security agency has chimed in with its assessment of the recent report claiming that multiple companies — including Apple — had malicious chips inserted by Chinese spies into their computer systems.
Both Amazon and Apple, two of the companies named, have so far denied the claims. Now Britain’s National Cyber Security Center has said there’s no reason to doubt them.
Despite Apple’s denials, it’s “highly plausible” that secret spy chips could have been planted on the company’s servers, said a former Apple hardware engineer.
Anna-Katrina Shedletsky, who spent nearly six years at Apple helping build several generations of iPod, iPhone and Apple Watch, said spy chips could have been slipped into the design of servers used for Apple’s iCloud services, as alleged in a Bloomberg Businessweek story.
“With my knowledge of hardware design, it’s entirely plausible to me,” she said. “It’s very highly plausible to me, and that’s scary if you think about it.”
Update: Apple and Amazon both issued lengthy statements Thursday concerning the Chinese spy chip allegations. We updated this post to include those statements.
Apple denies that Chinese spy chips infiltrated its iCloud server hardware after claims that motherboards used by Apple, Amazon and dozens of other tech companies contained microchips used for surveillance purposes.
Cupertino insists the story is “wrong and misinformed.” Apple also says Chinese spying had nothing to do with the company’s decision to cut ties with a supplier.
Tim Cook went on the offensive toward competing companies like Amazon and Google in a new interview tonight on privacy.
Appearing on Vice News Tonight on HBO, the Apple CEO was asked if his company’s stance on privacy is stopping Siri from becoming more competitive with Alexa. Cook pushed back saying any company that says it needs all your data to make its service better is telling you a “bunch of bunk.”
Florida Senator Marco Rubio isn’t happy about Mac apps. Specifically, he’s not happy about Mac apps stealing user data and sending it off to remote servers in China. And he’s perhaps most unhappy that Apple failed to act sooner than it did.
In a letter sent Wednesday, Rubio voiced his complaints to Apple CEO Tim Cook. In it, he asked why Apple failed to immediately act upon information it had about an app, Adware Doctor, which was behaving in a malicious manner.
