Tim Cook, chief executive officer of Apple Inc., during the first day of in-store sales of Apple’s latest products at Apple’s Fifth Avenue store in New York, US, on Friday, Sept. 20, 2024.
Victor J. Blue | Bloomberg | Getty Images
Apple stock closed down 4% on Thursday, its worst day since Aug. 5, following several reports of lackluster iPhone sales in China.
The iPhone maker’s stock price is down nearly 12% from its most recent peak in December, and it’s the worst-performing of the seven largest technology stocks so far in 2025.
The slide comes after a Thursday report from Canalys, a market research firm, which suggested that Apple had fallen to the third place in terms of smartphones sold in China in 2024, behind homegrown manufacturers Vivo and Huawei.
Apple shipped 15% of the 284 million phones sold in China last year, according to the report, but that was down 17% on an annual basis. Vivo and Huawei, meanwhile, saw strong growth.
TSMC, a key Apple supplier, on Thursday reported a smartphone sales forecast for the first quarter that suggested a nearly 6% sequential drop. TSMC, which makes the chips at the heart of Apple’s devices, attributed the drop to seasonality. TSMC said that AI chips comprised over half of its revenue in the fourth quarter, displacing smartphones, which had been its largest business.
Notable Apple supply chain analyst Ming-Chi Kuo on Monday wrote that he expects iPhone shipments to decline 6% on an annual basis in the first half of 2025, with most of the decline happening in the second quarter. Kuo wrote that he believes Apple Intelligence, the company’s AI system which is not yet available in China, isn’t boosting iPhone demand.
“There is no evidence of Apple Intelligence’s ability to benefit hardware replacement cycles or service business,” Kuo wrote.
Apple reports its December quarter results on Jan. 30.
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