China Takes Wind Out Of Apple iPhone Sales
People walk past an Apple store in Beijing in December 2018. Apple CEO cited weaker-than-expected iPhone sales in China as the company lowered its quarterly revenue estimates Wednesday.
Greg Baker/AFP/Getty Images
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Greg Baker/AFP/Getty Images
Apple is cutting billions from its revenue estimates for the just-ended holiday season, citing sharply slower iPhone sales in China.
“While we anticipated some challenges in key emerging markets, we did not foresee the magnitude of the economic deceleration, particularly in Greater China,” CEO Tim Cook said Wednesday in a letter to Apple investors.
Cook lowered the company’s revenue guidance for the three months that ended Dec. 29 to about $84 billion from as much as $93 billion.
The announcement of weakness from one of the world’s largest companies offers fresh evidence of a global economic slowdown, which has sent stock markets sliding in recent months.
Cook said that in its earlier projection, Apple had “expected economic weakness in some emerging markets. This turned out to have a significantly greater impact than we had projected.” The company also saw “fewer iPhone upgrades than we had anticipated,” he said.
In August, Apple became the first company worth $1 trillion. But its stock has dropped more than 30 percent in the past three months, leaving its market cap at below $750 billion. Apple’s stock fell an additional 7.5 percent in after-hours trading Wednesday following the announcement.
Cook said the slowing in China’s economy was made worse by “rising trade tensions with the United States.”
Slumping financial markets seemed to hurt consumer confidence in China, he said, “with traffic to our retail stores and our channel partners in China declining as the quarter progressed.”
With $73 Million Deal, Christian Pulisic Is Most Expensive U.S. Soccer Player Ever
Chelsea FC will pay nearly $73 million to Borussia Dortmund for American soccer player Christian Pulisic. He is seen here in a Champions League match between Dortmund and Atlético Madrid in November.
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Quality Sport Images/Getty Images
Updated at 3:38 p.m. ET
Chelsea Football Club will pay 64 million euros — nearly $73 million — to sign U.S. soccer star Christian Pulisic, bringing the 20-year-old winger to England’s Premier League.
The deal, which pays a transfer fee to his current club, Borussia Dortmund, makes Pulisic the most expensive American soccer player of all time.
Pulisic will play out the rest of the current season with Dortmund, the German club Pulisic joined as a youth player when he was just 16. His contract had been set to expire at the end of the 2019-2020 season. A native of Hershey, Pa., Pulisic plays for the U.S. Men’s National Team and, in 2016, became the youngest USMNT player to score in a World Cup qualifier.
In an effusive letter posted on Twitter, Pulisic thanked the fans, his teammates and coaches. “It feels like only yesterday that I arrived in Dortmund as a raw, excited very nervous but exceptionally proud 16-year old,” he wrote. “I would not be where I am today without the Club and their belief in giving young players a chance.”
Liebe Borussen ?? (????) pic.twitter.com/nAKgF1sHdI
— Christian Pulisic (@cpulisic_10) January 2, 2019
Pulisic’s parents are both former footballers: They met playing soccer at George Mason University. His grandfather was born in Croatia, and Pulisic was able to get a Croatian passport, enabling him to play in Europe at 16, rather than 18.
In a statement on the Dortmund website, the club’s sporting director called Chelsea’s five-and-a-half-year, $72.52 million offer “an extremely lucrative bid.”
“It was always Christian’s big dream to play in the Premier League. That certainly has to do with Christian’s American background, and as a result we were unable to extend his contract,” Dortmund sporting director Michael Zorc said in a statement. “Christian Pulisic is a perfect player in terms of his character.”
Irrespective of what you think about Pulisic’s destination and transfer fee, take a moment to celebrate an American kid growing up in Hershey, PA with big dreams of joining Premier League powerhouse, today made those childhood dreams come true. May there be many more to come ??? pic.twitter.com/egS8y9oAdW
— roger bennett (@rogbennett) January 2, 2019
“We are delighted to have signed one of Europe’s most sought-after young players,” Chelsea director Marina Granovskaia said in a statement. “Christian has shown his quality during a fantastic spell in Germany and at just 20, we believe he has the potential to become an important Chelsea player for many years to come.”
Dortmund is currently leading the top division of the German league, known as the Bundesliga. In April 2016, Pulisic became the youngest non-German to score a goal in the league.
Some observers think there is more to the Chelsea deal than Pulisic’s talents.
As one American soccer fan put it: “Whether he excels or not, this is a masterstroke of business. There are 320 million Americans and most don’t have a favorite BPL Club. Sign the most famous player in the USA and you’ll pick up quite a few.”
On soccer Reddit, fans speculated that NBC, which broadcasts the Premier League in the U.S., was likely thrilled at the news. “They’ll probably have a dedicated camera fixed on Pulisic at all times,” wrote one.
Fox Sports’ David Mosse suggested that Pulisic has another thing working in his favor: “Chelsea are bad about developing their academy players and young players that they spent very little money on. But a flashy foreign signing who they spent 64 million euros on will be given every chance to succeed.”
The previous record for highest transfer fee for an American was set in 2017, when the German club Wolfsburg paid 20 million euros for John Brooks. Pulisic will join a handful of other Americans currently in the Premier League, including DeAndre Yedlin, Tim Ream and Danny Williams.
While 64 million euros is a lot, the Pulisic move doesn’t rank among the richest in international soccer. That distinction belongs to a deal made in 2017, when Paris Saint-Germain paid 222 million euros for Brazilian forward Neymar.
Activists Brace For 2019 Abortion-Rights Battles In The States
Abortion-rights advocates rally outside the Iowa capitol building in May. A law there banning abortion after a fetal heartbeat is detected is one of several state laws on its way through the courts.
Barbara Rodriguez/AP
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Barbara Rodriguez/AP
With a newly configured U.S. Supreme Court, the stakes are high for abortion-rights battles at the state level. Abortion-rights advocates and opponents are preparing for a busy year — from a tug-of-war over Roe v. Wade to smaller efforts that could expand or restrict access to abortion.
Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh is known for his conservative record on issues including reproductive rights. And with his confirmation, many abortion-rights opponents see new opportunities to restrict the procedure at the state level.
“The pro-life movement has been talking about more pro-life-friendly courts for years, and we see Kavanaugh really tilting that balance,” says Jamieson Gordon with Ohio Right to Life.
Activists in Ohio just pushed through a law banning a common second-trimester abortion procedure called dilation and extraction. Gordon says her group is feeling optimistic and is working to pass more restrictions in the new year.
“It really has been encouraging for us knowing that if our bill … got picked up to go to the court, that we would have a more favorable court,” she says. “So I do think that we’ve seen the tide turn.”
A “watershed moment”
Abortion-rights advocates also are preparing for a wave of bills to be introduced in statehouses across the country, says Elisabeth Smith, chief counsel for state policy and advocacy at the Center for Reproductive Rights.
“We think this will be a watershed moment in terms of the number [of bills] that are filed, and then potentially the number that will actually be enacted in various states,” Smith says.
She says advocates are working to protect abortion rights, repeal existing restrictions and fight new efforts to limit access to the procedure.
“I think the specter of the Supreme Court will be behind both the proactive bills — in terms of shoring up the right and access [to abortion] at the state level — and on the other side, I think states that are hostile to reproductive rights are going to be jockeying to be the state that sends a law to the Supreme Court,” Smith says.
Tug-of-war over Roe v. Wade
Many abortion-rights opponents say they’re hoping to overturn Roe v. Wade, the 1973 decision that legalized abortion nationwide.
“States want their bill to be the one to go to the Supreme Court. They want to be the one,” says Sue Liebel, state director for the anti-abortion-rights group Susan B. Anthony List.
Possible test cases for Roe already are working their way through the courts — including an Iowa law banning abortion after a fetal heartbeat is detected, and one in Mississippi prohibiting the procedure after 15 weeks.
Liebel says anti-abortion-rights activists want to pass similar bills in as many states as possible.
“So I think they’re hopeful; they’re energized and rarin’ to go,” Liebel says.
If Roe were weakened or overturned, more power for regulating abortion would fall to the states. Several anti-abortion-rights groups are pushing to increase the number of states banning abortion after 20 weeks or earlier.
Meanwhile, lawmakers supportive of abortion rights in several states are sponsoring bills to guarantee the right to abortion in state law, in places including Massachusetts, Virginia and even Texas, according to Smith, with the Center for Reproductive Rights.
“It’s unlikely that [Texas] bill will pass,” Smith says. “But I think more and more state advocates are bringing up this bill — either as a messaging vehicle, or to actually get it enacted.”
Big steps, and small ones
NARAL Pro-Choice America is promoting those bills. But Deputy Policy Director Leslie McGorman says it is also working on incremental efforts to improve abortion access, including legislation allowing a broader range of medical providers — such as nurse practitioners and physician assistants — to provide abortions in more states.
“We know that as long as abortion is sort of a one-off procedure, or care that’s delivered in a standalone clinic and people sort of don’t know what it is, that it’s gonna be this part of health care that’s sort of viewed that way, that’s viewed as sort of marginal,” McGorman says.
Abortion-rights opponents also are continuing to pursue their own incremental strategy.
Americans United for Life has close to 60 model bills aimed at restricting abortion. Among them is the Abortion Reporting Act, which requires medical providers to submit detailed reports to health officials about abortion-related complications.
“This is really designed to make sure that women are informed about those abortion providers that are especially dangerous,” says the group’s president, Catherine Glenn Foster.
Abortion-rights advocates say the requirements are intrusive and vaguely defined. Planned Parenthood sued last summer to block a similar law in Idaho.
“There’s also a big push to defund abortion facilities, to stop them from getting Title X funding,” says Ingrid Duran, of the National Right to Life Committee.
It’s already illegal for federal funds to pay for abortions in most cases, but anti-abortion activists want to ban organizations such as Planned Parenthood, which offer abortions, from receiving any public money for reproductive health services. The Trump administration has proposed blocking such groups from getting funds through Title X, the federal family planning program for low-income people; Duran says similar efforts are underway in many states.
