Apple’s Weak Forecast, AWS’ Profit Rockets

Nothing particularly frightening emerged from the two big tech goliaths that reported September quarterly results tonight, Apple and Amazon. But they offered nothing particularly cheery, either.

For both companies, the updates had a mix of good and bad news. Apple, for instance, reported 6% top-line growth for the September quarter, its best quarterly growth number in two years. That was thanks to 5.5% growth in iPhones, twice the improvement of the year-earlier period, which suggests the iPhone 16 series may have done better so far than we all think.