Apple CEO Tim Cook attends the annual session of China Development Forum (CDF) 2018 at the Diaoyutai State Guesthouse in Beijing, China March 26, 2018.
Jason Lee | Reuters
Apple shares fell over 3% on Thursday, following a 4% decline on Wednesday, after several reports suggesting that Chinese government workers could be banned from using Apple iPhones.
The reported restrictions, which have not been publicly announced by the Chinese government, raise concerns that Apple’s products could get caught up in international tensions between the U.S. and China.
Greater China, including Hong Kong and Taiwan, is Apple’s third-largest market, accounting for 18% of Apple’s 2022 revenue of $394 billion. It’s also where the vast majority of Apple products are assembled. Apple declined to comment.
China has ordered officials at central government agencies not to bring iPhones into the office or use them for work, The Wall Street Journal reported on Wednesday, although it was unclear how widely the bans were issued. The ban could spread to other state companies and government-backed agencies, Bloomberg News reported on Thursday.
While a ban on all government employees could reduce iPhone unit sales in China by as much as 5%, Bernstein analyst Toni Sacconaghi wrote in a Thursday note, it would be a larger threat to Apple if the bans sent a signal that everyday Chinese citizens should instead use electronics from Chinese companies.
“Perhaps more importantly, restricted use of iPhones among government employees could negatively impact sales among consumers (related family members; general populace) and could be part of a broader move by the Chinese government to promote usage of domestic technology,” Sacconaghi wrote.
Dan Niles, portfolio manager at Satori Fund, said on Thursday he sold his stake in Apple and is now shorting the company, citing the possibility of a government iPhone ban and increased competition from Huawei.
New competition
Last week, several Chinese retailers started taking orders for a new Huawei phone, the Mate 60 Pro, which quickly became a hot topic on social media in the country.
The phone starts at 6900 RMB, or about US$954, and uses a Chinese-manufactured chip from Huawei’s chip subsidiary, HiSilicon. Early tests suggest that the phone can access 5G speeds, although Huawei’s specification pages don’t mention it.
Huawei was placed on the U.S. entity list in 2019 over fears that its technology could give the Chinese government backdoor access to communications. The move requires U.S. companies like Google and Qualcomm to get permission from the U.S. government before supplying Huawei. The sanctions significantly hampered Huawei’s phone business, which was rising before the sanctions, forcing it in recent years to spin off some of its phone brands and contributing to a $12 billion shortfall back in 2020.
Huawei’s new phone has a chip, manufactured on China’s mainland, that uses the 7-nanometer production process. Smaller production processes tend to translate to faster and more efficient chips. This year’s upcoming iPhone is expected to use a 3nm process, manufactured by Taiwan Semiconductor, and Apple first went with a 7nm process to make its A12 chips, which were used in new iPhones in 2018.
But Huawei’s chip raises questions about how well separate restrictions on chip manufacturing technology, which aim to prevent Chinese companies from making cutting-edge processors, are working.
“From my perspective, what it tells us is that the United States should continue on its course of a ‘small yard, high fence’ set of technology restrictions focused narrowly on national security concerns, not on the broader question of commercial decoupling,” Jake Sullivan, U.S. national security advisor, said Tuesday in a briefing.
In Apple’s most recent quarter, ending in June, Greater China sales grew 8% on an annual basis to $15.76 billion. It was Apple’s fastest-growing region. On the company’s earnings call, Cook said Apple was seeing users switch from Android phones to iPhones, mentioning that was “at the heart” of Apple’s results.
“We continue to try to convince more and more people to switch because of the experience and the ecosystem that we can offer them,” Cook said.
Masayoshi Son, chairman and chief executive officer of SoftBank Group Corp., speaks during the company’s annual general meeting in Tokyo, Japan, on Friday, June 27, 2025.
Bloomberg | Bloomberg | Getty Images
Intel and SoftBank announced on Monday that the Japanese conglomerate will make a $2 billion investment in the embattled chipmaker.
SoftBank will pay $23 per share for Intel’s common stock, which closed on Monday at $23.66. The shares rose about 6% in extended trading to $25.
The investment makes SoftBank the fifth-biggest Intel shareholder, according to FactSet. It’s a vote of support for Intel, which hasn’t been able to take advantage of the artificial intelligence boom in advanced semiconductors and has spent heavily to stand up a manufacturing business that’s yet to secure a significant customer.
“Masa and I have worked closely together for decades, and I appreciate the confidence he has placed in Intel with this investment,” Intel CEO Lip-Bu Tan said in a statement, referring to SoftBank founder Masayoshi Son.
Intel shares lost 60% of their value last year, their worst performance in the company’s more than half-century on the public market. The stock is up 18% in 2025 as of Monday’s close.
Tan took over as Intel CEO in March after his predecessor, Pat Gelsinger, was ousted in December.
Intel has been a major topic of discussion in Washington of late, due to the company’s role as the only American company capable of manufacturing the most advanced chips.
However, Intel’s foundry business, which is designed to manufacture chips for other companies, has yet to secure a major customer, a critical step towards stabilization and expansion. Last month, Intel said it would wait to secure orders before committing to certain future investment in its foundry.
Tan met with President Donald Trump last week after the president had called for the CEO’s resignation. The U.S. government is considering taking an equity stake in Intel, according to reports.
SoftBank, meanwhile, has become an increasingly large player in the global chip and AI markets.
In 2016, SoftBank acquired chip designer Arm in a deal worth about $32 billion at the time. Today the company is worth almost $150 billion. Arm-based chips are part of Nvidia’s systems that go into data centers.
SoftBank was also part of President Trump’s Stargate announcement in January, along with OpenAI and Oracle.
The three companies committed to invest an initial $100 billion and up to $500 billion over the next four years in the AI infrastructure project. Two months later, SoftBank led a $40 billion investment into OpenAI, the largest private tech deal on record.
“This strategic investment reflects our belief that advanced semiconductor manufacturing and supply will further expand in the United States, with Intel playing a critical role,” Son said in a statement.
Nikesh Arora, CEO of Palo Alto Networks, looks on during the closing bell at the Nasdaq Market in New York City on March 25, 2025.
Jeenah Moon | Reuters
Palo Alto Networks reported better-than-expected quarterly results and issued upbeat guidance for the current period. The cybersecurity software vendor said Nir Zuk, who founded the company in 2005, is retiring from his role as chief technology officer.
The stock rose about 6% in extended trading.
Here’s how the company did compared to LSEG estimates:
Earnings: 95 cents adjusted vs. 88 cents expected
Revenue: $2.54 billion vs. $2.5 billion expected.
Revenue in the fiscal fourth quarter rose 16% from about $2.2 billion last year, the company said in a statement. Net income fell to about $254 million, or 36 cents per share, from about $358 million, or 51 cents per share, in the year-ago period.
The company also issued upbeat guidance for the fiscal first quarter. Earnings per share will be between 88 cents and 90 cents, Palo Alto said, topping an 85-cents estimate from StreetAccount.
For the full year, Palo Alto said revenue will range from $10.48 billion to $10.53 billion on adjusted earnings of $3.75 to $3.85 per share. Both estimates exceeded Wall Street’s projections.
Palo Alto said that for the fiscal first quarter, remaining purchase obligations, which tracks backlog, will range between $15.4 billion and $15.5 billion, surpassing a $15.07 billion estimate.
Last month, the company announced plans to buy Israeli identity security provider CyberArk for $25 billion. It’s the largest deal Palo Alto has made since its founding, and most ambitious in an acquiring spree that ramped up after CEO Nikesh Arora took the helm of the company in 2018.
Shares sold off sharply after the news broke and have yet to recover previous highs. The stock is down about 3% this year as of Monday’s close.
“We look for great products, a team that can execute in the product, and we let them run it,” Arora told CNBC following the announcement. “This is going to be a different challenge, but we’ve done well 24 times, so I’m pretty confident that our team can handle this.”
Lee Klarich, the company’s product chief, will replace Zuk as CTO and fill his position on the board.
Satellite internet service Starlink, which is owned and operated by Elon Musk‘s SpaceX, appeared to suffer a brief network outage on Monday, with thousands of reports of service interruptions on Downdetector, a site that logs tech issues.
The outage marked the second in two weeks for Starlink. SpaceX did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The network’s July 24 outage lasted for several hours, with SpaceX Vice President of Starlink Engineering Michael Nicolls blaming the matter on “failure of key internal software services that operate the core network” behind Starlink.
That outage followed the launch of T-Mobile‘s Starlink-powered satellite service, a direct-to-cell-phone service created to keep smartphone users connected “in places no carrier towers can reach,” according to T-Mobile’s website.
SpaceX provides Starlink internet service to more than six million users across 140 countries, according to the company’s website, though churn and subscriber rates are not publicly reported by the company.
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The SpaceX Starlink constellation is far larger than any competitor. It currently features over 7,000 operational broadband satellites, according to research by astronomer Jonathan McDowell.
On Monday, Musk’s SpaceX successfully launched another group of satellites to add to its Starlink constellation from the Vandenberg Space Force Base in Southern California.
SpaceX is currently aiming to increase the number of launches and landings from Vandenberg from 50 to about 100 annually.
On Thursday last week, the California Coastal Commission voted unanimously to oppose the U.S. Space Force application to conduct that higher volume of SpaceX launches there.
The Commission has said that SpaceX and Space Force officials have failed to properly evaluate and report on potential impacts of increased launches on neighboring towns, and local wildlife, among other issues.
President Donald Trump recently signed an executive order seeking to ease environmental regulations seen by Musk, and others, as hampering commercial space operations.