According to the first financial report, global inflation and the epidemic lockdown are still continuing, but for Apple CEO Cook, his biggest concern at present is not the slowdown in consumer demand, but the continued tension in the supply chain. This differs from the judgment of some analysts.
Apple posted strong quarterly earnings after hours, though after-hours shares fell more than 2 percent after warning of cost increases caused by supply chains.
Apple's chief financial officer told analysts on an earnings call that supply chain issues would cost sales of $4 billion to $8 billion this quarter, a much greater impact than the previous quarter.
In the latest fiscal quarter, Apple's revenue was $97.3 billion, up 8.6% from the same period last year, with a profit of $25 billion and gross margin of 43.7%. Apple's iPhone sales rose $50.6 billion, up 5.5 percent year-over-year, and service sales rose 17 percent to $19.8 billion, all above average analyst expectations.
Over the past quarter, Apple's sales growth in Greater China slowed to 3.47% to $18.34 billion. But Cook denied factors related to the lockdown affected sales in the quarter.
Cook said supply chain-related issues continue with other chips that go with 5G chips. However, Apple does not predict when the shortage of traditional chip products, which mainly affects the supply chain, will continue to end.
We see that Apple is currently warning that the overall crisis of the supply chain may lead to a loss of $8 billion in sales, and many people will be very surprised, why does Apple have such a statement, and how should we judge Apple's current market analysis and expectations?
First of all, for the current entire electronics industry, the crisis of the supply chain is an inevitable market crisis, this is because in the current market background, the pressure of the supply chain is very huge, under the influence of such an overall market pressure, whether it is the chip industry or other raw materials, are more or less affected by the overall market supply chain pressure, the pressure of this supply chain on the one hand is because of the lack of factory operation level around the epidemic, and the overall shipping capacity is also greatly restricted. On the other hand, it is affected by the increase in the cost of raw materials, and all localities are actually facing a certain degree of continuous increase in raw material prices, which is transmitted to the supply chain and forms a supply chain crisis. So not only are there many Apples, but the problems faced by the consumer electronics industry are all the same, which is the pressure from the supply chain.
Secondly, let's look at why Apple will pay so much attention to the current problems in the supply chain, because compared to other mobile phone manufacturers or consumer electronics companies, Apple's supply chain problems are relatively light, but because Cook is based on the supply chain management starting price, so for customers the supply chain problems are often more likely to be taken seriously, which is based on the overall market demand and market characteristics of different business leaders, so Apple's supply chain crisis, We can also think of it as a direction that Apple attaches special importance to under the background of the current development of the entire market.
Third, even Apple is facing such a serious supply chain crisis, in fact, for China's consumer electronics companies, it is also very severe, which is our consumer electronics companies to find ways to overcome their own supply chain problems, after all, the current supply chain crisis directly restricts the sales of the market, if consumer electronics companies fail to make a difference in this regard, it is likely to face huge market pressure and market risks. However, for us at present, it may be more important to pay attention to how to break the huge impact of the shortage of core raw materials such as chips, after all, this is the problem we need to solve most at present.