Apple announced on Tuesday financial results for the third fiscal quarter of 2017, which corresponds to the second calendar quarter of the year. For the quarter, Apple posted revenue of $45.4 billion and net quarterly profit of $8.7 billion, or $1.67 per diluted share, compared to revenue of $42.4 billion and net quarterly profit of $7.8 billion, or $1.42 per diluted share, in the year-ago quarter.
Apple shares fell more than 2 percent Monday, falling for a second-straight day due to mounting concerns about unsustainably high stock prices. The iPhone maker’s stock has lost nearly 6.2 percent of its value in just two days. Technology stocks have been hit particularly hard, as some investment firms fear that stocks like Facebook, Amazon, Netflix, and Alphabet in particular rose too quickly.
Apple unveiled a host of new products, updates and software features at its annual Worldwide Developer’s Conference (WWDC) on Monday, and one of them could potentially save lives. The upcoming iOS will include a feature called ‘Do Not Disturb While Driving" that will make it easier to avoid texting while driving. By all indications, it’s rather simple tool from a technological standpoint – but if it works as advertised, iPhone’s ‘Do Not Disturb’ feature could prevent car accidents and traffic fatalities, which is more than enough to make it a worthwhile update.
Apple’s rumored Siri smart speaker, which is designed to compete with the Google Home and Amazon Echo, is already in production ahead of a prospective debut at the upcoming Worldwide Developers Conference, reports Bloomberg.
Citing sources "familiar with the matter," Bloomberg says production has already started on the speaker, but it is not expected to be ready to ship until later in the year. Still, Apple could introduce the speaker at WWDC, which kicks off next Monday.
Apple is reportedly working on a dedicated artificial intelligence chip that would power AI-related tasks on mobile devices, according to a report from Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman. The chip, which may be called the Apple Neural Engine, would be used to offload tasks that require sophisticated algorithms related to facial and speech recognition and augmented reality tasks that rely heavily on computer vision.
Tech giant Apple has been named the most valuable brand in the world for a seventh consecutive year, worth $170 billion. Its brand value is up 10% over last year and represents 21% of the company’s recent market value of $806 billion, a 10 per cent increase on the figure for 2016. Google ranked second place, whose brand value has risen $19.3bn from last year to just under $102bn, according to Forbes. It’s the second straight year Google has placed second to Apple, and it is closing the gap with a 23% gain this year after a 26% jump in 2016.
Apple Pay is now available in Italy, and iPhone users in the country are able to add eligible credit and debit cards to the Wallet app for use with Apple’s payments service in stores and online.
In Italy, Apple Pay is launching with support for Carrefour bank and UniCredit, as well as Boon prepay. The site says support for additional banks will be added later this year.
Rumors of Apple Pay’s expansion to Italy have been circulating for several weeks as Apple worked to add support for its payments service in the country, and the service has been listed as "Coming Soon" on the Apple Pay Italy site since March.
Apple is the world’s most valuable publicly traded company, and it just broke its own record. Shares opened at $149.06 a piece on Monday, with 5.2 billion outstanding shares. Following a positive analyst report, Apple’s shares rose over 3% in midday trading to a record high of $153.70. At one point, the company’s market value rose above $800 billion before retreating below that barrier. Apple’s shares closed up 2.7% for the day at $153.01, good for a market value of $797.8 billion.
