Apple Forecasts Record Holiday Revenue Amid Siri AI and Memory Pressures
Apple reported fiscal Q4 2026 revenue of $114.5 billion, up 12% year over year, while company gross margin fell to 47.9% and product gross margin to 37.2%. For the December quarter, CFO Kevan Parekh forecast 7–10% revenue growth, a record revenue quarter, and gross margin of 45–46%, with higher memory costs and Siri AI rollout costs expected to weigh on margins. Apple also said supply remains constrained, including shortages of the new iPhone Duo.
Apple’s guidance shows how memory-market constraints and the cost of deploying Siri AI are affecting a major consumer technology company’s holiday-quarter economics.
Following today’s earnings report, Apple held its quarterly earnings call, during which the company discussed the impact of rising memory costs on its profit margins and warned of additional pressure from Siri AI expenses during the holiday quarter. Here are the details.
Apple’s gross margins fall despite record revenue
Over the past few quarters, Apple has repeatedly warned that rising component costs would put pressure on its profit margins. Last quarter, gross margin was 50.1%, up from 49.3% in Q2. However, that included a roughly two-percentage-point benefit from tariff refunds.
Today, Apple reported that its gross margin fell to 47.9% in Q4 2026, with product gross margin dropping to 37.2%, down from 40.1% in the previous quarter. That represented a 2.2-percentage-point decline in company-wide gross margin and a 2.9-percentage-point drop in product gross margin.