Apple reports fiscal first-quarter earnings after the bell. The quarter, which ends in December, is Apple’s biggest of the year by sales and the first full sales period for the iPhone 15, which launched in September.
Apple faces significant challenges, coming off four straight quarters with revenue declines. Investors will be closely watching to see if Apple guides to growth again in the current quarter.
Concerns about demand in China, Apple’s third-largest region by sales, will weigh on the company. Its iPad and Mac units could also have a tough quarter, since demand for computers remains muted.
On the other hand, Apple could give strong updates to the number of active devices in use, a metric that analysts use to forecast the company’s lucrative services business. Management could also offer some perspective on how it sees the first few weeks of preorders for Apple’s virtual reality headset, the Vision Pro, as a bright spot.
Some analysts believe Apple’s iPhone revenue may look good in a soft market quarter, outperforming rivals that are also seeing weak demand. But a strong quarter of iPhone sales over the holiday season could mean a seasonally weak March quarter.
“With the robust sell-in volumes in F1Q24, current expectations from investors have moved to a modest beat led by robust iPhone numbers, even though accompanied on the flip-side by above-seasonal iPhone decline into F2Q,” JPMorgan analyst Samik Chatterjee wrote in a note Wednesday.
Apple hasn’t given official guidance since 2020, but management usually provides data points on a call that signal how it sees the quarter shaking out.
For example, the company signaled to investors in November that the December quarter may not show a significant return to growth after four straight quarters of declining sales, signaling that it would be “similar” to last year’s December total of $117.15 billion.
Apple said in November that the iPhone would do well but that it expects iPads and Wearables, including Apple Watch and AirPods, to decline from last year. It said that the Mac unit would do better than a 34% year-over-year decline.
China demand will be closely watched. Apple faces renewed competition from Huawei in the region, and some surveys have shown sagging sales.
“iPhone purchase intentions in China fell to a 5 year low this year, with iPhone loyalty/retention rates falling to the lowest levels since 2013, indicating both economic pressures on high-end iPhone purchases and greater competition within the China market,” Morgan Stanley analyst Erik Woodring wrote in a note Wednesday.
IPhones were discounted in China during a shopping holiday called Singles Day, similar to the U.S. Amazon Prime Day, which may signal weak demand. But discounts can also drive sales.
“Apples revenue in China in F4Q declined -2.5% y/y and with limited drivers of growth in the region in F1Q (CounterPoint research indicating -9% y/y decline in units in China in C4Q for Apple), we expect investors will be focused on iPhone momentum following the recent price cuts,” Chatterjee wrote.
Beyond the nuts and bolts of Apple’s profit and loss during the December quarter, Thursday’s earnings report will be the first opportunity to hear from Apple management on how it sees the recent launch of its virtual reality headset, the Vision Pro.
The $3,500 device is expected to sell in small quantities this year, which means it won’t be material in terms of Apple’s business versus its mature product lines. The Vision Pro wasn’t sold in the December quarter — it only went up for preorder earlier this month and releases on Feb. 2. But many investors see Apple’s Vision Pro as a potential new major computing platform, with the ability to drive sales growth once future versions of the headset get cheaper. Any enthusiastic comments from Apple CEO Tim Cook about the device could stoke excitement.
“We remain comfortable with our current assumption of muted uptake for the device under 1% of Apple sales this year and next,” Rosenblatt analyst Barton Crockett wrote in a note Wednesday.
Here’s what Wall Street is expecting for first-quarter revenue and earnings, and second-quarter outlook, according to LSEG consensus estimates:
Earnings per share: $2.10
Revenue: $117.91 billion
March quarter outlook: $1.57 earnings per share on $95.95 billion in revenue
Here’s what to expect from Apple’s product lines, according to StreetAccount consensus estimates:
Michael Intrator, co-founder and chief executive officer of CoreWeave Inc., during an interview on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) in New York, US, on Monday, Sept. 22, 2025.
Michael Nagle | Bloomberg | Getty Images
CoreWeave on Thursday announced a $6.5 billion deal with OpenAI, expanding its current agreement with the artificial intelligence startup behind ChatGPT.
The new agreement brings the AI cloud infrastructure provider’s total contracts with OpenAI to $22.5 billion.
“This milestone affirms the trust that world-leading innovators have in CoreWeave’s ability to power the most demanding inference and training workloads at an unmatched pace,” CoreWeave CEO Michael Intrator said in a statement.
In March, CoreWeave announced an $11.9-billion agreement with OpenAI to provide AI datacenters and technology over five years. Intrator told CNBC in May that the companies expanded the agreement by $4 billion.
CoreWeave, which went public in March, makes money by renting out data centers packed with numerous Nvidia graphics processing units. The company is backed by Nvidia and makes a significant chunk of its revenue from Microsoft, which is a key investor in OpenAI.
At the time of its prospectus, CoreWeave said it operated 32 datacenters powered over 250,000 Nvidia GPUs.
Earlier this month, CoreWeave’s share price popped after the company disclosed a $6.3 billion order from Nvidia.
OpenAI and Databricks are two of the most highly valued tech startups on the planet. Now they’re working together.
Databricks, a data analytics software vendor, said Thursday that it has committed to spending $100 million over multiple years with OpenAI. Databricks is making it easier for customers to connect their data stored in its cloud service with GPT-5, announced in August, and other OpenAI models.
OpenAI, which was recently valued by private investors at $500 billion, has become a household name in the years since the launch of its ChatGPT in late 2022. In partnering with Databricks, valued at more than $100 billion in its latest funding round, OpenAI has landed its first formal integration with a business-focused product vendor, said Brad Lightcap, OpenAI’s operating chief, in a news conference Wednesday.
Lightcap said the company’s “aspiration is a multiple” of the $100 million spending commitment in terms of revenue the agreement will generate.
Databricks has formed similar partnerships with Google and with Anthropic. But OpenAI is leading the way with more than 700 million people using its ChatGPT assistant, powered by GPT-5, every week.
The company was making enterprise more of a focus even before the Databricks deal. Microsoft has been bringing OpenAI models into businesses, governments and schools. And OpenAI has been building up its own sales function.
Databricks CEO Ali Ghodsi said the partnership will simplify the process for its customers when it comes to accessing OpenAI’s models, which they’ve already been using in large numbers.
Until now, if a Databricks customer wanted to tap a proprietary OpenAI model to help analyze internal data, it would have required extensive configuration, as well as legal and security sign-off.
“The key difference here is that any database customer automatically now, just by clicking in the UI, can start using this product,” Ghodsi said, referring to the user interface. Ghodsi said the price is similar to what it would cost if the user went directly to OpenAI.
Greg Ulrich, Mastercard‘s chief AI and data officer, said he’s optimistic about the integration.
“It enables opportunity for research and targeted experimentation, using AI to solve new problems, bringing value to customers, enhancing employee productivity, in an environment that we trust, that we know,” Ulrich said.
It’s an increasingly competitive space.
Databricks rival Snowflake, which has a market cap of $75 billion, announced an expansion of its Microsoft partnership in February, enabling the use of OpenAI models. Oracle, which has a $300 billion cloud contract from OpenAI, said two weeks ago that in October it will launch a service for running Google, OpenAI and xAI models on data stored in its database software.
Databricks said earlier this month that it now generates more than $4 billion in annualized revenue, growing over 50% year over year, with $1 billion coming from AI products. The company’s $100 billion valuation was announced alongside a $1 billion funding round.
OpenAI and Databricks ranked No. 2 and No. 3, respectively, on CNBC’s 2025 Disruptor 50 list.
The European Commission launched an antitrust probe into German software behemoth SAP on Thursday, citing concerns about the company’s practices in software support services.
According to the Commission, the investigation will assess “whether SAP may have distorted competition in the aftermarket for maintenance and support services related to an on-premises type of software, licensed by SAP, used for the management of companies’ business operations.”
SAP, in a statement on Thursday, said it believed its policies and actions were fully compliant with EU competition rules.
“However, we take the issues raised seriously and we are working closely with the EU Commission to resolve them,” a spokesperson said. “We do not anticipate the engagement with the European Commission to result in material impacts on our financial performance.”
SAP is one of Europe’s most valuable companies, with a market cap of almost 282 billion euros ($331 billion). Shares of the firm moved lower on Thursday, losing 2% by 12:45 p.m. in London (7:45 a.m. ET).
The EU probe relates to a piece of SAP software called Enterprise Resource Planning, or ERP.
ERP is widely used by large corporations to manage their everyday finance and accounting needs. SAP is a major player in the space — but it isn’t alone. The company competes with the likes of Microsoft and Oracle, which offer their own ERP products.
Specifically, the European Commission said it was addressing the so-called “on-prem” version of SAP ERP. On-prem refers to software that is hosted on a company’s own servers, as opposed the cloud where it can be remotely accessed via SAP data centers.
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Much of SAP’s business still comes from its on-prem IT services. However, the company has for years been attempting to shift more of its focus to the cloud — particularly as it faces competition from technology giants like Microsoft and Amazon, which dominate the market for public cloud services.
The latest EU antitrust probe is noteworthy as it doesn’t involve Big Tech.
Much of the bloc’s work on competition policy has focused on the market power of U.S. technology giants. This has led to criticisms from both the tech sector and politicians in the U.S., who say American tech firms are being unfairly targeted. On Wednesday, Apple urged a repeal of the Digital Markets Act, the EU’s landmark digital competition law, saying it was “leading to a worse experience for Apple users in the EU.”