Apple beat Wall Street's quarterly profit estimates on Thursday, but iPhone sales and China revenue for the holiday quarter were weak due to stiff Chinese competition and a slow rollout of artificial intelligence features.

Apple's earnings call is today at 5 pm ET. AAPL stock heads into the report down 4% YTD. Analysts are focused on services and China sales.

Apple reported $18.5 billion in sales in greater China last quarter, comfortably below consensus estimates of $20.9 billion.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio says President Donald Trump’s desire to acquire Greenland and retake control of the Panama Canal is driven by legitimate national security interests stemming from growing concerns about Chinese activity in the Arctic and in Latin America.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio said on Thursday he had "zero doubt" that China has a contingency plan to shut down the Panama Canal in the event of a conflict with the U.S. and that Washington intends to address what it sees as a national security threat.

The start-up had become a key player in the “Chinese Large-Model Technology Avengers Team” that would counter US AI dominance, said another. China’s delight, however, spelled pain for several giant US technology companies as investors questioned whether DeepSeek’s breakthrough undermined the case for their colossal spending on AI infrastructure.

Top White House advisers this week expressed alarm that China's DeepSeek may have benefited from a method that allegedly piggybacks off the advances of U.S. rivals called "distillation." The technique,

As US companies pour billions of dollars into advancing artificial intelligence, a little-known Chinese startup has seemingly done the impossible. DeepSeek unveiled a chatbot app that performs as well if not better than those of Silicon Valley giants,