Two Tech Giants, Two Different Stories: Amazon Soars as Apple Stumbles on Supply Woes 

New York, July 31: Amazon (AMZN) shares surged on Friday while Apple (AAPL) dropped sharply, as investors reacted in starkly opposite ways to the two tech giants’ June-quarter earnings reports released Thursday. In premarket trading, Amazon was up 12.02 per cent at $263.80, a gain of $28.30, as of 4:59 am ET, building on Thursday’s close of $235.50, which was already up 3.90 per cent, or $8.85, on the day.  

Apple, by contrast, was down 7.25 per cent at $309.25, a drop of $24.18, as of 5:01 am ET, extending Thursday’s close of $333.43, which had fallen 1.41 per cent. Amazon’s premarket move puts it firmly within its 52-week range of $196.00 to $278.56, while Apple’s slide pulls it well off its 52-week high of $344.57, though still above its 52-week low of $201.50. 

Both companies reported June-quarter results on Thursday, but the market’s verdict could not have been more different. Apple’s earnings, revenue and iPhone sales all came in above expectations, yet the stock still sold off sharply after the company issued weak guidance for the current quarter, citing “supply constraints.” Apple said revenue growth in the ongoing quarter would land between 9 per cent and 11 per cent.  

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iPhone sales during the reported quarter increased by 21.7 per cent to USD 54.25 billion from USD 44.58 billion a year ago. Mac sales grew 28.66 per cent to USD 10.35 billion from around USD 8 billion, and the wearables, home and accessories segment grew by 6.46 per cent to USD 7.88 billion from USD 7.4 billion. 

The company is grappling with a severe shortage of memory chips, a critical component across its device lineup, alongside intensifying competition for chip manufacturing capacity industry-wide. That squeeze has already pushed Apple to raise prices on the Mac and iPad, and analysts expect an iPhone price increase to follow later this year. 

Amazon told a very different story. Revenue at its cloud computing division, Amazon Web Services, jumped 37 per cent year-on-year in the second quarter, marking its strongest expansion since 2021. AWS is closely watched by investors because it’s where Amazon books the bulk of its AI-related revenue, making the unit a key barometer of demand for the company’s artificial intelligence products. The blowout AWS number appears to have overshadowed any other concerns in the report, driving Amazon’s stock sharply higher in both Thursday’s regular session and Friday’s premarket trade. 

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The divergence highlights how differently Wall Street is treating supply-side stumbles versus AI-driven growth stories right now: Apple’s beat-but-guide-down quarter was punished harshly given its exposure to the ongoing global memory chip shortage, while Amazon’s cloud strength was rewarded even more generously than its already-solid headline numbers might suggest, underscoring just how central AI infrastructure spending has become to how investors are valuing Big Tech heading into the back half of the year.