Apple to report Q3 earnings following price hikes on Macs, iPads

Apple's (AAPL) 3rd 4th net are connected platform Thursday, mounting up a imaginable reprieve from the week's spot and AI banal sell-off.

Shares of the iPhone shaper person benefited from their wide deficiency of vulnerability to the AI trade, with investors flocking to the banal arsenic a information play and concisely sending the company's marketplace capitalization to astir the $5 trillion people connected Tuesday.

Apple banal is up immoderate 24% twelvemonth to date, easy outpacing the remainder of the "Magnificent Seven" stocks. Goog (GOOG, GOOGL) is the second-best performer of the batch successful the period, climbing astir 7%.

For the 3rd quarter, Apple is expected to study net per stock (EPS) of $1.89 connected gross of $108.8 billion. That would people a leap from the EPS of $1.57 and $94 cardinal successful gross the institution saw successful the aforesaid play past year.

Apple's iPhone gross is projected to deed $53.5 billion, a 20% summation from the $44.5 cardinal the institution brought successful in Q3 2025.

Services, Apple's second-largest business, is anticipated to spot gross of $31.3 billion, up 14%. Revenue retired of China is expected to turn 27% to $19.5 billion.

While Apple's banal has outperformed its Big Tech peers, the Cupertino, Calif.-based institution is inactive facing its ain AI-induced headache: rising representation and retention costs, acknowledgment to the planetary AI build-out.

That has driven the institution to summation the terms of its Macs and iPads, though the iPhone has been spared astatine slightest for now. Apple is wide expected to boost the terms of its next-generation iPhones erstwhile it unveils the products astatine its yearly showcase successful September.

According to Jefferies expert Edison Lee, the increases successful representation prices could unit Apple's iPhone margins going forward. 

"We estimation the representation outgo would emergence further successful [the 2nd fractional of 2026], and assuming akin terms hikes with iPad (except the 512GB version, wherever we presume a US$300 terms hike vs 200 for iPad), the incremental [gross margins] would lone beryllium 21%. That could trim the wide iPhone GM from 38% to 34.5%," Lee wrote successful an capitalist note.

But Brandon Nispel of KeyBank Capital Markets sees a imaginable iPhone terms summation arsenic a acold larger contented for Apple than simply an interaction connected gross margins.

"With [Apple] providing a harmless haven to the sell-off successful semis, we deliberation they are missing the bigger picture, which squarely fits our thesis: arsenic [Apple] raises iPhone prices, portion maturation volition slow, and arsenic portion maturation slows, truthful volition idiosyncratic growth, which we deliberation yet volition dilatory Services growth," Nispel wrote successful a enactment to investors.