Apple beat Wall Street's quarterly profit estimates on Thursday, but iPhone sales and China revenue for the holiday quarter were weak due to stiff Chinese competition and a slow rollout of artificial intelligence features.

Apple's earnings call is today at 5 pm ET. AAPL stock heads into the report down 4% YTD. Analysts are focused on services and China sales.

Apple reported $18.5 billion in sales in greater China last quarter, comfortably below consensus estimates of $20.9 billion.

The start-up had become a key player in the “Chinese Large-Model Technology Avengers Team” that would counter US AI dominance, said another. China’s delight, however, spelled pain for several giant US technology companies as investors questioned whether DeepSeek’s breakthrough undermined the case for their colossal spending on AI infrastructure.

Top White House advisers this week expressed alarm that China's DeepSeek may have benefited from a method that allegedly piggybacks off the advances of U.S. rivals called "distillation." The technique,

As US companies pour billions of dollars into advancing artificial intelligence, a little-known Chinese startup has seemingly done the impossible. DeepSeek unveiled a chatbot app that performs as well if not better than those of Silicon Valley giants,