Apple shares drop 5% after component shortages drag down sales forecast

Apple just posted a June quarter that most companies would frame and hang on the wall. Revenue climbed 16%. iPhone sales surged 22%. And the stock still got punched in the face. Shares fell roughly 5% in after-hours trading on July 30, with some reports pegging the decline as steep as 8%. That makes it Apple’s worst single-session drop in 16 months. The culprit wasn’t what happened last quarter. It was what Apple said about the next one. The forecast that spooked Wall Street Apple guided for just 9-11% revenue growth in the September quarter, a sharp deceleration from the 16% it just printed. The reason: component shortages, particularly in advanced memory chips, are choking the company’s ability to build enough iPhones, Macs, and iPads to meet demand. CEO Tim Cook described the memory constraints as a “hundred-year flood.” The company has already raised prices on its Mac and iPad lines as of June 2026, passing along some of the elevated production costs to consumers. Cook acknowledged that Apple’s supply-chain flexibility has been reduced due to heightened demand for advanced semiconductor nodes. The AI demand monster eating the chip supply The explosive buildout of AI infrastruct...