Apple executives predict a relatively strong increase in sales, a sign that the company will recover from the decline in iPhone sales as it has artificial intelligence features.

The forecast comes after Apple has slightly declined on the iPhone revenue for the quarter of festive shopping and lagged behind in Wall Street estimates, which is hindered by the lack of some artificial intelligence markets intended to be the main point of sale of its latest devices .

Apple’s CEO, Tim Cook, He said that these capabilities would approach more users in Europe this spring and the shares increased 3.14% in the after -market trade.

Apple has approached artificial intelligence more closely than many of its competitors, avoiding huge costs of opponents such as Microsoft MSFT.O and instead envisions artificial intelligence with features that are intended to help sell its latest material.

This approach yielded earlier this week when Chinese Deepseek It presented free AI technology that triggered fears for price wars, plunged the shares of some Apple competitors and slightly uploaded the iPhone manufacturer’s shares.

Despite the decline in artificial intelligence, Apple’s overall sales and profits were reinforced by the strongest of the expected sales in the first quarter of the iPad and Macs, where the new chips helped to persuade customers to be upgraded.

In the quarter, the iPhone sales were slightly reduced to $ 69.14 billion, compared to the $ 71.03 billion that analysts were expecting, according to LSEG data. Sales in China dropped to $ 18.51 billion, compared to $ 20.82 billion a year earlier and below $ 21.33 billion expected by a Visible Alpha survey.

Total sales of $ 124.30 billion for the fiscal first quarter ended on December 28 exceeded the 124.12 billion Wall Street target, while LSEG profits per share of $ 2.40 overwhelmed the target. of $ 2.35.

The iphone He has placed artificial intelligence as a set of new features and features, such as emailing and registering telephone calls, but the company presents the capabilities over time and has not yet secured a local partner in China to release them.

In an interview, Apple CEO Tim Cook said the AI ​​features, called Apple Intelligencedrive sales of the company’s new devices.

“We saw that in markets where we have developed Apple Intelligence, the iPhone family performance from year to year was stronger than those where Apple Intelligence was not available”Cook said.

While Cook said Apple Intelligence would be released in new languages ​​such as French and German in April, he said there is no timetable for when it will be available in China.

“We continue to work with the regulators and we will release it as soon as possible”said Cook.

Tim Cook told Reuters that about half of Apple’s revenue reduction by 11% in China was attributed to changes to how much stock reserves of the company had.

MAC sales in the last quarter have benefited from a new series of Mac Minis, IMAC and MacBook Pro with new M4 chip. Apple Intelligence features are widely available on Apple’s Mac and iPad because their larger size means they have more powerful chips.

‘Silicon makes it Perfect to perform artificial intelligence workload And so I guess this is a very basic compelling reason for people to be upgraded, ” said Cook.

Apple’s Mac and iPad sales reached $ 8.99 billion and $ 8.09 billion respectively, above estimates for $ 7.96 billion and $ 7.32 billion, according to LSEG data.

Apple said its service activity, which includes iCloud storage and music and video streaming services, reached $ 26.34 billion in sales, increased by 13.9% from the previous year and above estimates 26.09 billion dollars, according to LSEG data.

“While the company’s careful approach to the development of artificial intelligence has caused criticism, the strong development of services and the expansion of the ecosystem provide critical momentum to facilitate continuing battles for the iPhone in China.”said the emarketer analyst, Jacob Bourne.

The company’s portable devices, which includes the Apple Watch and Airpods series, had sales of $ 11.75 billion, compared to analysts’ expectations of $ 12.01 billion, according to LSEG data.