Apple said Monday it does not know when it will restock its sold-out foldable iPhone Duo, leaving a gap in supply of its priciest phone as the company heads into the Christmas trading period.
The Duo, which costs nearly $2,000, sold out just over a week after it launched. Apple blamed constraints in sourcing key components and said it could not predict when supply would catch up with demand.
really hard to predict when supply and demand will be in balance
Apple
Chief executive John Ternus, who launched the Duo after succeeding Tim Cook in September, also warned that Apple faces an unprecedented jump in memory costs, including chips, as the artificial intelligence industry pours billions of dollars into data centers.
Record iPhone and Mac sales
The company's sales for the three months to Sept. 26 climbed to $114bn from $102bn a year earlier, and pre-tax profit rose to $36.1bn from $32.8bn. Those figures do not include the Duo, which went on sale at the end of October.
iPhone revenue grew 17% to $57bn for the quarter, and Apple said it sold more iPhones worldwide over the past year than in any year before. Mac sales rose 27% to a record $10.7bn.
Not every product line grew. iPad sales fell 10%, and sales of wearables, including headphones and watches, dropped 7%.
Chip and memory squeeze
Chief operating officer Sabih Khan said most Apple devices are still supply-constrained, partly because the company struggles to get enough advanced-node microprocessors, most of which are made by Taiwan-based TSMC. He expects the shortage to last into next year, hitting iPads and Macs hardest, and Apple has repeatedly attributed the strain to unexpected demand.
Memory costs add a second pressure. Demand for data center space has surged as AI chatbots and platforms from companies such as OpenAI and Anthropic gain users, pushing up storage prices. Cook earlier this year likened the sudden rise in data center costs to a once-in-a-millennium flood, and Apple has raised prices on nearly all its hardware by around 20%.
The Duo is the iPhone's first major design change in almost 20 years, but some buyers have reported screen problems. Last week Apple said it would replace handsets affected by an issue that caused a small number to crack along the inside fold. Executives did not raise those problems on Monday, and Ternus said he was thrilled by early reaction to the phone.
margins well north of 45% for a very well-established company, I think, are pretty impressive
Sunil Krishnan, Aviva Investors
Sunil Krishnan of Aviva Investors called the results reasonably solid, despite concerns about Apple's profit-margin guidance and memory chip costs. Apple shares fell 1.8% in after-hours trading.
