Apple Slides 7.4% as Soft September Guide and Memory Costs Overshadow a Record Quarter

AAPL closed at $308.91 on July 31, down 7.4%, after opening roughly 9% lower in what was its worst opening move since August 2024 . The selloff followed a fiscal third-quarter report that beat on both lines: revenue of $109.42 billion, up 16% year over year against consensus near $108.86 billion, and earnings of $2.02 per share versus the $1.89 analysts had modeled .

What moved the stock was the guide, not the print. Apple pointed to September-quarter revenue growth of 9% to 11%, below the roughly 12% Wall Street had penciled in, and told investors that component supply constraints will worsen rather than ease heading into the holiday build . Memory is the specific pressure point: DRAM and NAND pricing has tightened as AI server demand absorbs supply, and that input cost now lands on a hardware maker shipping hundreds of millions of units a year .

The product mix was otherwise strong. iPhone revenue rose 22% to $54.3 billion and Mac revenue climbed 29% to $10.4 billion, both June-quarter records . The soft spot was Services, at $30.74 billion against roughly $31.22 billion expected . That is the segment investors lean on for margin and multiple, which is why a miss there can weigh more than its dollar size suggests.

Analysts covering the print characterized the pressure as a supply-chain and input-cost problem rather than a verdict on Apple's AI position. That distinction shapes what to watch next: whether memory pricing peaks before the December quarter, whether Apple absorbs the cost in gross margin or passes it through, and whether Services reaccelerates. The read-through is not confined to one name either, since memory cost inflation is a sector-wide input and Apple's guide is the largest data point yet on how much of it reaches consumer hardware margins.

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