Apple Is an AI Safe Haven—but Safety Isn’t Cheap

A facts-only brief, written by a local AI model from this article in The Wall Street Journal, November 3, 2026. It may contain mistakes, and it is not the article: the full story is at wsj.com.

Apple reported product revenue of $82.9 billion for its September quarter, exceeding analyst expectations, while maintaining a gross margin of 47.9%. The company’s shares rose 1.4% over the past month, outperforming peers like Alphabet, Meta, and Nvidia, which saw double-digit declines. This relative strength stems from Apple’s limited exposure to the current artificial intelligence spending boom and its ability to raise smartphone and computer prices by up to 33% this summer.

Background

• International Data Corp. data shows global smartphone sales fell 22% year-over-year in the third quarter, whereas iPhone unit sales declined by only 4%.
• CFO Kevan Parekh projected that gross margins will narrow to between 45% and 46% in the current quarter due to rising component costs, particularly for memory chips in high demand for AI computing.
• Assurant reported that the average age of traded-in iPhones surpassed four years in the second quarter, up from 3.7 years in the first quarter, suggesting customers may be holding onto older devices longer.
• Apple holds $56.7 billion in cash and marketable securities, with capital expenditures of just $9 billion in the recently ended fiscal year, compared to nearly $800 billion projected for five large hyperscalers this year.

Read the full article at wsj.com

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