Apple and Amazon defy Wall Street gloom on iPhone and cloud sales
Tech behemoths Apple and Amazon have defied expectations with results that outshone Wall Street forecasts, rounding off a big week of earnings from the world’s most powerful firms.
Both companies posted double-digit revenue growth and upbeat outlooks, calming investor nerves after a rocky few days for the wider tech sector.
While Apple reported a surge in iPhone sales, Amazon’s rebound was driven by its cloud arm, with both results showing resilience despite tariff pressures, layoffs and rumours of an AI bubble swirling around Silicon Valley.
Apple’s results mark its first quarterly report since the release of the iPhone 17 range, which chief executive Tim Cook dubbed as “off the chart.”
The phone maker reported $102.5bn (£78bn) in revenue, up eight per cent year-on-year and ahead of analyst estimates.
Meanwhile, net income hit $27.5bn (£21.4bn), almost double last year’s figure, which lifted Apple shares in after-hours trading.
Despite Donald Trump’s fresh tariffs on Chinese and Indian imports costing the titan $1.1bn last quarter, Apple still posted a record $49bn (£36bn) in iPhone sales, a six per cent rise.
Cook forecast that total revenue would grow between 10 and 12 per cent in the final quarter of the year, which is typically Apple’s busiest, driven by strong demand across the US and Europe.
“We expect the December quarter to be the best ever in the history of the company,” he told reporters.
The record-breaking figures come as Apple’s market cap topped $4tn for the first time this week, cementing its position alongside Microsoft and Nvidia in the trillion-dollar club.
Amazon’s cloud comeback
Amazon also delivered a surprise beat after the bell on Thursday, with net sales up 13 per cent to $180.2bn (£133bn) and net income surging 38 per cent to $21.2bn (£15.6bn).
However, the real driver was a sharp rebound in its cloud business, Amazon Web Services (AWS), which grew 20.2 per cent to $33bn (£24.8bn), its fastest pace since 2022.
The performance lifted Amazon’s stock 14 per cent in after-hours trade, briefly adding around $330bn to its market value.
“AWS is growing at a pace we haven’t seen since 2022,” said Amazon boss Andy Jassy. “We continue to see strong demand in AI and core infrastructure.”
AWS, which generates roughly 60 per cent of Amazon’s operating income, shrugged off a major outage earlier this month that disrupted thousands of websites.
The strong showing might have suggested cloud customers were ramping up AI-related spending again after a year of belt-tightening.
Advertising revenue also jumped 24 per cent to $17.7bn, as Amazon leaned harder on sponsored product listings and retail ad placements.
The upbeat positive came despite a $2.5bn legal settlement with the US Federal Trade Commission and $1.8bn in severance costs following 14,000 job cuts.
Jassy described the restructuring as a “cultural reset” rather than a financial one, saying the company needed to “return to being the world’s largest startup.”
Even so, Amazon’s capital spending seems to be ballooning. The company expects $125bn in capital expenditures next year, mostly for AI infrastructure and new data centres.
“Amazon’s results show a company firing on all cylinders again,” said GlobalData’s Neil Saunders. “AI is fuelling growth across the business, and those investments will define its competitive edge for the next decade.”
Both companies’ upbeat reports stood in stark contrast to Meta’s bruising week and underscored that not all Big Tech stand on equal grounds. Apple is proving that old-fashioned product sales still deliver, while Amazon is leveraging its vast AI and cloud infrastructure to generate revenue.
As Jerome Powell, chair of the Federal Reserve, said on Wednesday: “Today’s AI leaders actually have earnings.”