As markets opened up today, Microsoft overtook Apple as the world’s largest company, the first time in 16 months that Apple did not rank first.
Shares of Apple fell at the open this morning despite record fourth-quarter revenue, as Tim Cook warned that a global chip shortage would hit the company in the holiday season. Shares of Microsoft are up slightly, giving it a market capitalization of $ 2.45 trillion at press time, compared to just $ 2.44 for Apple. Of course, there is a lot to negotiate on the day, so qualifying may not end like this, but it is still a momentous day.
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Apple reported $ 83.4 billion in revenue for the fourth quarter of 2021, but says it lost about $ 6 billion due to COVID supply chain disruption and global chip shortages. Cook and Apple say the shortage will continue to tighten through the end of the year. From our report today:
As Cook noted, the COVID factor has improved significantly in October, but he said that looking ahead “we believe the main cause of the supply chain-related shortage will be chip shortages.” Cook went on to say that this would affect “almost most of our products,” including their best iPhones, Macs, iPads and more. However, Cook noted that chip shortages were occurring in legacy nodes for older devices such as the iPhone 12, as opposed to devices such as the iPhone 13. However, restrictions are expected to continue, as CFO Luca noted. Maestri:
“As we mentioned earlier, during the September quarter, supply restrictions affected our revenues by around $ 6 billion. We estimate that the impact of supply restrictions will be greater during the December quarter. Despite this challenge, we are seeing high demand for our products and we expect to achieve very strong revenue growth year-over-year and to set a new revenue record for the December quarter.
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