Apple Inc.

Apple has offered to replace some iPhone 18 Pro Max devices after a small number of customers on the AT&T network suffered a cellular connectivity issue. The bug surfaced two weeks after the $1,299 handset reached the market, making it Apple's most expensive phone apart from its upcoming foldable, the iPhone Duo. Apple said it identified an issue affecting a small number of iPhone 18 Pro Max users on the AT&T network that may cause a device to lose service and be unable to make calls. The company released iOS 27.0.1 and a carrier settings update to keep the bug from hitting additional devices, but said the software will not restore cellular connectivity on units already affected, which require a hardware replacement. Those customers can contact Apple Support or AT&T, or visit an Apple Store or AT&T location for next steps.

Google has raised the price of its seven-month-old Pixel 10a smartphone by $100 to $599 for the 128GB model, another sign of how rising memory costs are pushing up prices across the consumer electronics industry. The Pixel 10a launched in March at $499 for the 128GB model and $599 for the 256GB version, and Google's U.S. website now lists the phones at $599 and $699, respectively. The increase was first spotted on Google's online store in Japan and later appeared on its U.S. website, according to 9to5Google. The move comes amid a persistent memory-chip shortage that has pushed up costs across the consumer electronics industry, with Samsung this week raising prices on most of its Galaxy S26 smartphones by $100, while Apple raised prices on its iPhone 18 lineup and also increased prices on some older models. Google had already raised prices across its Pixel 11 lineup by $100 when it introduced the phones in August, according to Bloomberg, offsetting some of the higher starting prices by including more storage in the base configurations. The Pixel 10a had been discounted to $424 last month, and Walmart still appeared to be selling the phone for $499, although supplies were limited.

Huawei Technologies has unveiled its Mate 90 flagship smartphone lineup, pressing ahead with its own operating system and in-house chip design technology amid US restrictions that have made access to advanced semiconductors and chipmaking equipment increasingly difficult. The premium models, including the Mate 90 Pro Max, use the Kirin 9050 Pro chip, produced with a technique Huawei calls LogicFolding, which restructures the internal connections of the chip from a two-dimensional to a three-dimensional layout. This allows for denser circuitry and faster processing, but requires more wafers in production. Richard Yu, CEO of Huawei's consumer business group, said advanced chip capacity remains tight because China must allocate part of its production capacity to the Ascend family of AI chips, and rising memory prices have pushed Huawei's smartphone costs up by an average of about 200 dollars per unit. The company therefore has to raise prices, but more slowly than costs are rising. The phone also runs the self-developed HarmonyOS 7 operating system, which now supports more than 450,000 applications and services. Huawei has not yet disclosed target prices for the Mate 90 Series. Data from International Data Corporation shows smartphone shipments in China fell 7% from January to August compared with the same period a year earlier, but Huawei's shipments in China rose 13%, and the average selling price of smartphones in China climbed 11.3% year on year in the second quarter to 543 dollars. Huawei's average selling price fell 14.7% to 628 dollars. Competition in China's foldable smartphone market has intensified since Apple launched the iPhone Duo in September. Richard Yu said Huawei holds about 75% of China's foldable smartphone market, and sales of the Pura X Max rose 76% week on week between September 10 and 13, with shipments surpassing 1.2 million units in China since its launch in April. Counterpoint Research expects Apple to ship about 6 million iPhone Duo units in 2026, with China, the world's largest foldable smartphone market, accounting for nearly a quarter of total shipments.

Britain's Competition Appeal Tribunal ruled on September 28 that part of a consumer class action against Amazon.com, Inc. and Apple Inc. can proceed, concerning a 2018 arrangement that allegedly restricted which sellers could list Apple and Beats products on Amazon's UK marketplace. The surviving portion of the claim is valued at between £289 million and £306 million, including interest, a fraction of Amazon's roughly $2.7 trillion valuation and Apple's close to $4.9 trillion. The tribunal narrowed the case considerably, throwing out claims covering Apple products bought directly from Apple or from other retailers, with the judge describing the reasoning behind them as a complex and speculative theory of harm. The claims allowed through target the marketplace itself, which Judge Kelyn Bacon called plausible, credible and grounded in the facts, and this is the smaller version of the case brought on a second attempt after an earlier filing was refused last year over concerns about the proposed class representative and its funding. Apple said it strongly disagrees with the claims, and the certification only means the case will now be heard, arriving days after a United States jury ordered the company to pay about $5.7 billion in an unrelated patent case.

New Apple CEO John Ternus is reportedly planning layoffs and canceling projects, according to a Bloomberg report. The cuts would range from small-scale numbers within large teams, and could help offset pressure from rising memory chip costs. Apple issued cautious revenue guidance for the current quarter in late July, largely because it cannot source enough memory chips to meet demand, and services revenue fell quarter over quarter in June for the first time since 2022. On his final earnings call, former CEO Tim Cook said Apple reluctantly raised prices because the company is in what he characterized as a 100-year flood on memory pricing, with exponential increases in memory prices. The memory market has tightened as demand for high-bandwidth memory and advanced dynamic random-access memory used in AI servers outpaces supply, with SK Hynix, Samsung Electronics, and Micron largely sold out of premium AI memory capacity through much of 2026. Experts expect memory supply to remain constrained into 2027, and layoffs under Ternus could also prevent Apple from making more significant price hikes in 2027 should the shortage continue.

Apple shares fell 1.6% today after Bank of America warned that third-party AI agents threaten to rewrite the economics of mobile commerce, striking at the core of Apple's ecosystem. The immediate catalyst is Meta's agentic AI Muse, launched on September 8, 2026, which cleared 2.5 million downloads in its first two weeks and surged to the top of the US iOS free-app chart, with OpenAI widely expected to announce its own consumer agent later today. In a new research note, Bank of America analyst Wamsi Mohan wrote that Apple can keep every handset sale and still lose discovery, referral, and transaction initiation, with routing economics shifting from the operating system to whoever owns the agent. Muse's early commerce integrations include Shopify's full catalogue and Shop Pay infrastructure, plus Expedia and PayPal, while Amazon notably blocked the agent outright. Apple's rebuilt Siri shipped with iOS 27 on September 14, 2026, using custom Google Gemini models for Apple Foundation Models, but Mohan said Siri AI still lacks persistent background tasks, broad third-party action coverage, and a dedicated agent payment rail, and that the bottleneck is not hardware since a modern iPhone comfortably exceeds Muse's benchmark requirements of 2 vCPUs, 8GB of RAM, and 100GB of storage. Bank of America maintained its Buy rating on Apple, citing its loyal installed base and user trust, but Mohan warned that Apple ships major software releases annually while agents improve daily.

A federal jury ordered Apple to pay more than US$5.7b to Taction Technology over haptic patents tied to the Taptic Engine. The verdict centers on claims that Apple products infringed Taction's haptic feedback technology, which interacts closely with the Taptic Engine hardware. Apple has said it plans to appeal the ruling, keeping the legal dispute active beyond the initial jury decision. The award is large in absolute terms but sits against Apple's multi trillion dollar market value and broad cash generation, with the more immediate effects falling on legal costs, potential security or escrow requirements, and any changes Apple might weigh for haptics design, licensing or future product development. The key marker ahead is the appeal timeline and any subsequent court decisions that revise, uphold or overturn the US$5.7b figure, alongside upcoming quarterly reports and filings for disclosures on contingent liabilities and cash set asides.

Asian stock markets opened lower this morning amid concerns that rising oil prices, driven by tensions between the United States and Iran, will add to inflation pressure and keep interest rates elevated. Japan's Nikkei index opened down 0.5% at 65,557.99 points, and South Korea's composite index opened down 0.7% at 6,844.41 points. Meanwhile, gold prices fell more than 3%, dropping below the $4,200 level to hit their lowest in more than seven weeks. COMEX December gold futures fell $152.80, or 3.54%, to close at $4,168.40 an ounce. The yield on 10-year U.S. Treasury bonds jumped past 5.2% to 5.261%, while the 30-year yield stood at 5.571%. President Donald Trump said the White House is still considering a ban on diesel exports. Separately, Reuters reported, citing sources, that Qatari mediators may hold separate talks with Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi in New York and with the U.S. side on Monday or Tuesday. In addition, a federal court jury ruled that Apple must pay more than $5.7 billion, or more than 191 billion baht, to Taction Technology Inc for infringing two of the company's patents.

Apple is confronting two sizable legal disputes, with a UK tribunal allowing a revived consumer claim over its 2018 sales agreement with Amazon to proceed while a separate US jury awarded Taction more than $5.7 billion over haptic technology. The UK tribunal let claims involving purchases on Amazon's UK marketplace proceed but rejected claims tied to purchases from Apple and other retailers, and the claim filing estimates 431.2 million to 898.6 million in marketplace damages before interest. Apple said it would appeal the US patent verdict. Neither figure is a bill Apple has to pay today, as the UK amount is a claim and the US verdict faces further legal review. Apple shares rose about 0.3% to $342.23 at approximately 10:18 a.m. ET Monday, a price 19.17% above the $287.18 GF Value estimate.

Burford Capital shares climbed 9.8% in Monday afternoon trading after a jury ordered Apple to pay $5.7B in damages to Taction Technology, a Burford client, in a patent lawsuit over haptics technology. Burford, which focuses on litigation finance and other legal finance activities, said the amount is likely to be adjusted in post-trial and/or appellate proceedings. If the verdict amount were paid, Burford's share would be $1.4B, split roughly between its balance sheet and investment funds, the company said on Monday. The jury found on Friday that the tech giant violated Taction Technology's patents. Burford cautioned that very few large patent verdicts survive the post-verdict process intact and that the outcome remains uncertain until final resolution, with no assurance as to the timing or amount of any ultimate recovery.

Investor Michael Burry has warned that a $3tn bill being hidden by AI companies threatens to wreck the global economy, according to an essay digging into regulatory filings. Burry's analysis shows Apple, Alphabet, Microsoft, Meta and Oracle have signed $1.2tn of leases on future data centres, of which at least $857bn is non-cancellable, while keeping those liabilities off their balance sheets under controversial accounting rules. The five companies have also made more than $1.5tn worth of purchase commitments that do not appear on their balance sheets, and when special purpose vehicles and guarantees are added, their total off-balance-sheet obligations climb above $3tn, a figure Burry says could reach $5tn by 2028. Burry noted the combined earnings of the big five were less than $400bn in the past year, calling it a gargantuan bet on gargantuan growth. Oracle this week attempted to declare force majeure on a massive data centre project in New Mexico, and analysts at Baird and Panmure Liberum warned that bringing the off-balance-sheet debt onto the books will cause interest, amortisation and depreciation charges to explode. A Microsoft spokesman said it will constantly assess the demand and supply environment to inform its AI strategy, while Amazon declined to comment and Apple, Meta and Oracle did not respond to requests for comment.

Jefferies analysts said in a note dated Monday that resale prices for Apple's latest high-end iPhones in Hong Kong are weaker than those of last year's models, suggesting softer demand for the devices. The 18 Pro is trading at discounts across almost all storage variants, while resale premiums for the 18 Pro Max fell sharply on launch day and have remained low or declined further. The 256GB 18 Pro Max is the only variant still commanding a meaningful premium, at about 8% above Apple's official price, while the 1TB and 2TB models are weaker, with the 2TB version trading HK$1,049 below the official price as of 5 p.m. on Sept. 27. Jefferies attributed the weakness partly to price increases of $400 and $500, which it said may be too high relative to the perceived value of the new models, and to Apple's switch from TLC to lower-cost QLC NAND in the 1TB and 2TB versions. The broker maintained its "underperform" rating on Apple, with the stock at $341.07 in the report.

India's Central Consumer Protection Authority has escalated complaints involving Apple's iOS 18 update to its investigation wing for a detailed investigation, examining allegations that the update caused screen, microphone, and other functionality problems and whether Apple's software warranty terms left affected consumers paying for repairs. Apple disputes the accusations, saying it found no systemic issues with iOS 18 and that providing no warranty on software is consistent with global industry standards, and it says the case rests on just 75 complaints. The regulator said consumers had to pay what it called exorbitant amounts for repairs and display replacements, and Reuters reported an estimated service cost of 27,900 rupees, or about $291, for damage to an iPhone 15 screen, more than a third of its retail price. If Apple is found to have violated consumer protection rules, Reuters reported it could be required to issue refunds or change its business practices, though no fines, refund amounts, or liability estimates have been set. The case is unfolding as India grows more important to Apple, with iPhones capturing 9% of the country's smartphone market last year, up from 4% in 2022, according to Counterpoint Research data cited by Reuters.

Apple has launched its first foldable iPhone Duo alongside the iPhone 18 Pro lineup, emphasizing enhanced on-device Siri AI and privacy as it enters the competitive foldable smartphone market. The move broadens Apple's premium hardware range and tests whether AI-focused differentiation can sustain its brand premium amid intensifying global competition. Among the latest announcements, a US$250,000,000 Siri and Apple Intelligence settlement is most relevant to the investment narrative, because it directly touches expectations around the AI features that underpin Apple's premium pricing; Apple denies wrongdoing, and the payout highlights how misaligned marketing and delivered AI capabilities can create both legal and reputational risks. Apple's narrative projects $616.5 billion revenue and $164.4 billion earnings by 2029, yielding a $325.66 fair value, a 5% downside to its current price, while the most pessimistic analysts assume revenue of about US$561.5 billion and earnings around US$147.4 billion by 2029. The key near-term risk remains margin pressure from higher component costs and legal or regulatory outcomes, though the new Siri-related class action settlement looks manageable rather than thesis changing.