2026-08-02
Tim Cook's Last Quarter: Apple Got Caught by Its Own Demand Forecast
On July 30, Tim Cook hosted the last earnings call of his tenure. He warned that iPhone, iPad and Mac will all be supply-constrained in the September quarter, and that Apple has less flexibility in the supply chain than normal, with a shortfall in leading-edge capacity. But he also named the root cause: this is not a supply issue but a demand forecast issue — demand ran beyond Apple's expectation. DRAM and NAND are up 63%–75% year over year, Cook called memory pricing a hundred-year flood, and admitted Apple did not want to raise prices but had to. John Ternus becomes CEO on September 1. A man who spent 25 years running supply chains ends his last quarter stuck on supply — and the root cause is a product judgment.
