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.
A general view of the Microsoft office building is seen in Cologne, Germany, on November 18, 2025.
Nurphoto | Nurphoto | Getty Images
Microsoft said Thursday that it will increase the prices of Office productivity software subscriptions for commercial and government clients on July 1.
The company’s Office applications, which include Word, Excel, PowerPoint and Outlook, have been facing increased competition in recent years from Google.
“We are continuously investing and innovating our platform for the future,” Nicole Herskowitz, corporate vice president for Microsoft 365 and Copilot, wrote in a blog post. “In the last year, we released more than 1,100 features across Microsoft 365, Security, Copilot, and SharePoint.” The new features have added value to the suites, she wrote.
Price hikes for commercial Office subscriptions have been infrequent. In 2022, Microsoft raised prices of its productivity bundles for the first time since launching the original Office 365 subscriptions in 2011. Microsoft changed the name of Office 365 to Microsoft 365 in 2020. In January, Microsoft announced a price hike for consumer Office bundles.
Microsoft offers Office 365 subscriptions for commercial use that include access to its productivity applications, along with higher-priced Microsoft 365 subscriptions that also include Windows operating system updates.
Here’s a breakdown of the commercial price changes:
For small and medium-sized businesses, Microsoft 365 Business Basic will cost $7 per person per month, up from $6.
Microsoft 365 Business Standard will be available for $14, up from $12.50.
Microsoft 365 Business Premium will continue to cost $22.
The entry-level Office 365 E1 offering for enterprises will still be sold for $10.
Office 365 E3 will jump 13% to $26 from $23.
The Microsoft 365 E3 package including Windows for enterprises will rise 8% to $39 from $36.
The full-featured Microsoft 365 E5 will increase to $60 from $57.
For front-line workers such as cashiers, Microsoft 365 F1 subscriptions will cost $3, up from $2.25.
Microsoft 365 F3 will be available for $10, up from $8.
The U.S. Defense Department and other government clients will face similar percentage price increases.
The various subscriptions all exclude access to the $30 Microsoft 365 Copilot add-on that draws on generative artificial intelligence models. Some companies have started widely rolling out Copilot, while others have held off on expanding their deployments, CNBC reported last week.
In many cases, organizations receive discounts off of list prices, but Microsoft has cut back on direct volume deals for some types of customers.
Almost 43% of Microsoft’s $77.7 billion in fiscal first-quarter revenue came from its Productivity and Businesses Processes segment, which includes Office. In October, the company said revenue from Microsoft 365 commercial cloud services jumped 17%, while seats increased 6%, mainly from products targeting small and medium-sized businesses and front-line workers.
Every weekday, the CNBC Investing Club with Jim Cramer holds a “Morning Meeting” livestream at 10:20 a.m. ET. Here’s a recap of Thursday’s key moments. 1. Stocks were little changed Thursday as Wall Street overlooked mixed labor market data. U.S. layoff announcements in November pushed the year’s total above 1.1 million, the highest level since 2020, according to job placement firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas. Initial jobless claims, however, came in lower than expected for the week ending Nov. 29. Despite the muted session, Jim Cramer says the market’s still overbought. That means we’re not looking to put new money to work right now. Meta Platforms was an outperformer in the portfolio. Shares jumped 4% after Bloomberg reported that the Facebook parent plans to make deep cuts to its metaverse unit. 2. Costco reported U.S. sales for November that were slightly weaker than the month before, sending shares down 3%. Company-wide same-store sales, however, accelerated last month, up 6.9% from October’s 6.6% gain. The stock’s weakness Thursday doesn’t present a buying opportunity just yet, according to Jim, because its multiple is still too high. “There are periods of underperformance in Costco, but if you look at the longer term, it’s one of the greatest performers of all time,” he added. 3. Salesforce stock was up after management posted a huge quarterly earnings beat and raised guidance Wednesday evening. The company missed slightly on revenue. We liked all the paid deals Agentforce, Salesforce’s AI-powered platform, pulled in this quarter. Still, generative AI adoption continues to pose a risk to Salesforce’s seat-based business model. CEO Marc Benioff will be on “Mad Money” on Thursday. 4. Stocks covered in Thursday’s rapid fire at the end of the video were: Snowflake , Five Below , Hormel Foods , PayPal , and Kroger. (Jim Cramer’s Charitable Trust is long META, CRM, COST. See here for a full list of the stocks.) As a subscriber to the CNBC Investing Club with Jim Cramer, you will receive a trade alert before Jim makes a trade. Jim waits 45 minutes after sending a trade alert before buying or selling a stock in his charitable trust’s portfolio. If Jim has talked about a stock on CNBC TV, he waits 72 hours after issuing the trade alert before executing the trade. THE ABOVE INVESTING CLUB INFORMATION IS SUBJECT TO OUR TERMS AND CONDITIONS AND PRIVACY POLICY , TOGETHER WITH OUR DISCLAIMER . NO FIDUCIARY OBLIGATION OR DUTY EXISTS, OR IS CREATED, BY VIRTUE OF YOUR RECEIPT OF ANY INFORMATION PROVIDED IN CONNECTION WITH THE INVESTING CLUB. NO SPECIFIC OUTCOME OR PROFIT IS GUARANTEED.
People walk next to the Google Cloud logo, during the 2025 Mobile World Congress (MWC) in Barcelona, Spain, March 4, 2025.
Albert Gea | Reuters
Google Cloud announced Thursday a multi-year partnership with artificial intelligence coding startup Replit, giving the search giant fresh firepower against the coding products of rivals, including Anthropic and Cursor.
Under the partnership, Replit will expand usage of Google Cloud services, add more of Google’s models onto its platform, and support AI coding use cases for enterprise customers.
Google will continue to be Replit’s primary cloud provider.
Replit, founded nearly a decade ago, is a leader in the fast-growing AI vibe-coding space.
In September, the startup closed a $250 million funding round that almost tripled its valuation to $3 billion, and said it grew annualized revenue from $2.8 million to $150 million in less than a year.
And new data from Ramp, a fintech company that also tracks enterprise spending on its platform, found that Replit had the fastest new customer growth among software vendors. Google, meanwhile, is adding new customers and spending faster than any other company on Ramp’s platform.
Put those together, and you get a clearer picture of why both companies see opportunity.
Read more CNBC tech news
Vibe-coding emerged as a phenomenon earlier this year after AI models became more adept at generating code using only natural language prompts, allowing users with little experience in programming to use AI to create functioning code and potentially full applications.
Anthropic announced on Tuesday that its product Claude Code hit $1 billion in run-rate revenue. The coding startup Cursor, in November, closed a funding round that valued it at $29.3 billion, while also announcing it reached $1 billion in annualized revenue.
Replit, which bills itself as an easy-to-use product for non-developers, could help drive Google Cloud adoption among enterprises, and expand the reach of its AI efforts beyond traditional engineers.
Google is riding on the momentum of its new top-scoring model, Gemini 3. Shares of Alphabet have risen more than 12% since its debut.