Supply chain woes cost Apple $6 billion (roughly Rs. 44,890 crore) in sales during the company’s fiscal fourth quarter, which missed Wall Street expectations, and Chief Executive Tim Cook said that the impact will be even worse during the current holiday sales quarter.
Cook told Reuters on Thursday the quarter ended September 25 had “larger than expected supply constraints” as well as pandemic-related manufacturing disruptions in Southeast Asia. While Apple had seen “significant improvement” by late October in those Southeast Asian facilities, the chip shortage has persisted and is now affecting “most of our products,” Cook said. “We’re doing everything we can do to get more (chips) and also everything we can do operationally to make sure we’re moving just as fast as possible,” Cook said. Cook said the company expects year-over-growth for its quarter ending in December. Analysts expect growth of 7.4 percent to $119.7 billion (roughly Rs. 8,95,413 crore). “We’re projecting very solid demand growth year over year. But we are also predicting that we’re going to be short of demand by larger than $6 billion,” Cook said.