Apple CEO John Ternus Faces Scrutiny and Ecosystem Risk

Apple CEO John Ternus just wrapped up his first quarterly earnings call, and Wall Street was not impressed. The fifty-one-year-old executive faced immediate stock pressure after revealing that memory chip shortages and slowing services growth will squeeze gross margins down to forty-five percent next quarter. While the four-point-nine trillion dollar company is celebrating record September iPhone sales and strong demand for the new foldable iPhone Duo, investors remain unconvinced by Apple's revamped Siri AI product. Investor Gene Munster warned that Apple is avoiding talk about personalized agents, calling them the biggest risk to the ecosystem. Meanwhile, supply chain bottlenecks mean new iPhone Duo orders will not arrive until the end of January, and some early units suffered from cracked screens that Apple is replacing. Ternus told analysts that memory pricing pressure is completely unprecedented right now, and costs will continue to climb past the December quarter.