Despite strong demand for its iPhones and services such as the streaming platform Apple TV+, Apple’s sales have continued to decrease.

Revenues fell 1% to $89.5 billion (£73.3 billion) in the three months to September 30, according to the internet behemoth.

After a post-lockdown surge in curiosity, sales of its Mac computers and iPads languished.

It is the fourth quarter in a row that sales have decreased year on year.

In an update to investors, the company stated that profits had surpassed $23 billion, aided by a new three-month record for iPhone sales.

It also pulled in a record amount from services like iCloud and Apple Music, raking in $22.3 billion for the California-based company, up 16% from the previous year.

Apple Sales Dip Again Despite IPhone Boost

However, it expressed concern about potential supply chain challenges impeding delivery of its new iPhone 15 Pro and Pro Max devices.

Apple CEO Tim Cook stated that the company is “working hard to manufacture more”.

“We do believe that later this quarter, we’ll reach a supply-demand balance,” he said.

Mr Cook stated that the company had its “strongest lineup of products ever” as it entered the critical Christmas selling period.

However, the most recent update revealed that other Apple products had recently failed to catch customers’ attention.

Sales of Mac computers, for example, fell to $7.6 billion in the third quarter, down from $11.6 billion the previous year.

Apple Sales Dip Again Despite IPhone Boost

At a highly anticipated conference in September, the firm unveiled its current iPhone lineup.

After the European Union mandated the modification, Apple stated that the iPhone 15 would not include its proprietary lightning charging connection. Instead, it employs the “universally-accepted standard” of a USB-C cord.

It has also needed help elsewhere, with economic uncertainty weighing on Chinese consumers.

On Thursday, the company reported a 2.5% drop in revenue in China, while Mr Cook stated that after accounting for foreign exchange rates, the company’s business in China had grown year on year.

Last month, the executive paid a surprise visit to China when he met with gamers in Chengdu.

It was his second trip to China this year, a vital market for Apple, as the company’s activities in the country have been hindered by Covid restrictions and US-China tensions.

Mr Cook stated in March that Apple has a “symbiotic” relationship with China, a vital manufacturing base.

SOURCE- (BBC)

According to newly unredacted portions of the FTC’s antitrust lawsuit against Amazon, the company used a secret algorithm that helped the company raise prices on other online sites and “destroyed” some internal communications while the agency was investigating the company.

According to the new extracts released on Thursday, Amazon officials purposefully destroyed correspondence by utilizing a feature on the popular app Signal that causes communications to vanish. The FTC said that by doing so, Amazon “destroyed more than two years’ worth of communications” from June 2019 to “at least early 2022,” despite directives to the contrary from the FTC.

Amazon spokesperson Tim Doyle said in a prepared statement that the FTC’s claim was “baseless and irresponsible.”

“Amazon voluntarily disclosed employee Signal use to the FTC, painstakingly collected Signal conversations from its employees’ phones, and allowed agency staff to inspect those conversations even when they had nothing to do with the FTC’s investigation,” Doyle stated in a press release.

In September, the FTC and 17 states sued Amazon, alleging that the corporation was abusing its market position to inflate prices on and off its platform, overcharge vendors, and hinder competition. Amazon has been accused of breaking federal and state antitrust laws, but the corporation has defended its business practices vigorously.

The antitrust prosecution is the government’s most forceful endeavor to curb Seattle-based Amazon’s market clout, and it comes at a time when the FTC has been taking big swings against internet corporations.

Amazon Used An Algorithm To Essentially Raise Prices On Other Sites, The FTC Says

The lawsuit’s unredacted extracts released on Thursday also gave new information on a much-discussed algorithm, originally published by The Wall Street Journal and former Vox reporter Jason Del Ray.

According to the FTC’s allegations, Amazon has utilized the program, nicknamed “Project Nessie,” to identify products that will allow them to make more money. The corporation utilized it to forecast where it may boost prices and have other shopping sites follow suit. According to the agency, Amazon activated the algorithm to raise prices on select products, and when other sites followed suit, it maintained the higher pricing in place. According to the FTC, Amazon’s usage of Nessie has resulted in more than $1 billion in excess profits.

“Aware of the public fallout it risks, Amazon has turned Project Nessie off during periods of heightened outside scrutiny and then back on when it thinks that no one is watching,” according to the complaint.

According to the agency, Amazon launched Project Nessie in 2014 and turned it on and off at least eight times between 2015 and 2019. According to the complaint, Amazon utilized the algorithm to establish pricing for items viewed more than 400 million times by shoppers in 2018.

Amazon Used An Algorithm To Essentially Raise Prices On Other Sites, The FTC Says

Though Amazon maintains the algorithm is “currently paused,” regulators say the corporation has considered launching studies in 2020 and 2021 to improve the effectiveness of Project Nessie. Doyle, an Amazon spokeswoman, described Nessie as an “old” pricing algorithm that the agency is “grossly” mischaracterizing.

“Nessie was used to try to stop our price matching from resulting in unusual outcomes where prices became so low that they were unsustainable,” he told reporters. “The project ran for a few years on a subset of products, but didn’t work as intended, so we scrapped it several years ago.”

The unredacted portions of the case, among other things, give new information on Amazon’s advertising operation.

According to the agency, then-CEO Jeff Bezos told executives to accept more trash ads — internally referred to as “defects” — because the company could generate more money through expanded advertising even though their existence annoyed consumers. In response, Doyle stated that Amazon “works hard to make it fast and easy” for customers to find items and other options “by providing a mix of organic and sponsored search results” based on characteristics such as relevance, reviews, availability, price, and delivery speed.

Amazon Used An Algorithm To Essentially Raise Prices On Other Sites, The FTC Says

Another unredacted section of the case revealed more information on the government’s claims that Amazon effectively forces merchants to utilize its logistics service, Fulfilment by Amazon, or FBA. One example is Amazon’s Seller Fulfilled Prime program, which allowed third-party sellers to show a Prime logo on their products without using FBA. Sellers seek the Prime badge because it denotes quick shipping, which can lead to more sales.

According to the agency, the corporation turned against the program in early 2019 after discovering rival fulfillment suppliers were advertising their services to vendors. Amazon discontinued membership in the program a few years ago, claiming that it was not providing the same high-quality experience that Prime customers expected. However, the agency stated that in 2018, vendors registered in the program satisfied Amazon’s “delivery estimate” criterion more than 95% of the time.

The lawsuit also included an email from an Amazon official stating that he was “losing (his) mind” after finding that UPS was promoting that it could fulfill Prime-eligible orders. According to the FTC, two “high-level” Amazon executives agreed in the same email chain that the business should consider shutting down Seller Fulfilled Prime in the United States.

NetChoice, an Amazon-backed industry association, said Thursday that the FTC was deceptive and that vendors, not Amazon, established the shipping estimates mentioned in the complaint. According to Doyle of Amazon, in 2018, sellers using the program were “promising deliveries within two days less than 16% of the time—far worse than the performance of sellers using Fulfilment by Amazon.” A few months ago, the corporation reopened enrollment in the program.

SOURCE – (AP)

WASHINGTON — The U.S. Google CEO Sundar Pichai testified in the largest antitrust lawsuit in the United States in a quarter-century, defending his company’s practice of paying Apple and other tech companies to make Google the default search engine on their devices, claiming the goal was to improve the user experience “seamless and easy.”

The Department of Justice claims that Google — a firm synonymous with internet searching — pays out tech companies to block alternative search engines to stifle competition and innovation. According to court filings placed into the record last week, the payments totaled more than $26 billion in 2021, a year in which Google’s parent company, Alphabet, had about $68 billion in operational expenses.

Google claims to be the market leader since its search engine outperforms the competition’s. “We are working very, very hard to provide the best experience for any given query,” Pichai stated. “That was always our true north.”

Pichai, born in India, joined Google in 2004 from the consulting company McKinsey & Co. Before becoming CEO, he worked on Google Chrome, the world’s most popular web browser, and was appointed to the company’s top position in 2015. He is also the CEO of Alphabet, Google’s parent business. Under his leadership, Alphabet’s net income increased to $60 billion last year, up from $19.5 billion in 2016, the company’s first full year of operation.

Google CEO Defends Paying Apple And Others To Make Google The Default Search Engine On Devices

Pichai, Google’s star defense witness, testified Monday that Google’s payments to phone manufacturers and wireless phone companies were partly intended to nudge them into making costly security upgrades and other improvements to their devices rather than simply ensuring Google was the first search engine users encountered when they opened their smartphones or computers.

Google benefits from the agreements because it earns money when users click on advertising that appears in its searches and splits the profits with Apple and other companies that use Google as their main search engine.

The Justice Department attempted to demonstrate that Google was concerned that Apple would launch its search engine and that it would lose talent to Apple. Pichai sought to be notified directly if a member of Google’s search engine team switched to Apple in a 2019 email presented in court.

The antitrust complaint was filed in 2020, during the Trump administration, and is the largest since the Justice Department went after Microsoft and its dominance of internet browsers 25 years ago. The trial began on September 12 in U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C., and is scheduled for 10 weeks.

Google CEO Defends Paying Apple And Others To Make Google The Default Search Engine On Devices

Much of the testimony in the case has taken place behind closed doors, and a large amount of material has been withheld from documents at the request of Google and Apple, whose attorneys argue that trade secrets must be protected.

A verdict from U.S. District Judge Amit Mehta is likely early next year. If the judge finds that Google violated the law, another trial will be held to determine how to limit its market power. The Mountain View, California-based firm could be barred from paying Apple and others to make Google the default search engine.

Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella has testified that Google has a hypnotic effect on users.

“You get up in the morning, you brush your teeth and you search on Google,” he added. According to him, the only way to break the habit is to change the default device setting. ___ Technology Associated Press Michael Liedke, a writer, contributed to this article.

SOURCE – (AP)