Five Ways to Look at Apple’s Surprise Bad News
None of them is good.
In an ugly New Year’s surprise Wednesday afternoon, Apple announced unexpectedly that it was cutting its first-quarter revenue guidance from $91.5 billion to $84 billion. The move is highly unusual. Apple reportedly last revised a projection like this in 2002.
CEO Tim Cook sent a letter to investors that attempted to explain what had changed so much over the past 60 days. An economic slowdown in China chopped down the company’s iPhone business there, Cook explained. And then in developed markets, it couldn’t make up the shortfall, because fewer people upgraded than had been expected.
