Apple sceptics have had to eat their words... at least for now

It turned in a good performance but its future is still under debate

- DAVE LEE

Did US tariffs help Apple Inc achieve a blowout quarter? That was one theory that emerged as the company disclosed a surprising surge in iPhone sales in the April-June quarter, up 14% compared with the period a year earlier, handily beating estimates.

Consumers, it was said, were rushing out to stores in fear that Donald Trump's 'Liberation Day' trade levies would drastically increase the cost of an upgrade; [reports had suggested that the price could have gone up by 43%].

It certainly makes some logical sense; though the data shows that the fears of consumers soon subsided. According to Placer.ai, which uses mobile location data to monitor foot traffic, elevated sales in the immediate days after Trump's address rapidly petered out—visitors to US Apple stores were up just 0.93% for the entire fiscal quarter compared to a year earlier. Meanwhile, visits to Apple's website from US consumers were down 3%, according to data from Similarweb.

On a call with investors to discuss the results, Chief Executive Officer Tim Cook acknowledged that tariff chatter did create unusual buying patterns in April, mostly around sales in the US of the iPhone and Mac computers. But overall, the boost was limited—Apple said just 1 percentage point of its 10% overall revenue growth came from these "pull forward" sales.