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Apple has a terrible 2025. The company that has dominated the technology for more than a decade suddenly struggles with the challenges of three critical fronts: a harmful legal defeat that can increase its business model of applications, increase tariffs to be fed in profits, and significant delay in their AI strategy.
The most non -consistent blow came earlier this month when US District Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers found Apple through a disrespect for the court that it deliberately violated the 2021 order in the Epic Games case. The decision was unusually raw, accusing Apple of deliberately circumventing court orders by executing a 27% committee on developers who directed consumers to external payment options – a lower than its standard 30% rate.
“Apple knew exactly what he was doing and at every stage he chose the most anti-competitive version,” Judge Rogers wrote, accusing Apple’s Vice President Alex Roman that he was “lied to the sworn” for the company’s decision-making process. The judge directed the federal prosecutors’ question to look at the crime proceedings – an exceptional step for an Apple growth company.
The decision immediately prevents Apple from limiting the communication of developers with consumers about alternative payment options and prohibits the company from imposing commissions for external purchases. This is a significant blow to the Apple Apple Apple Revenue model, which is a key engine of its increasingly important service business. Revenue from services that include the App Store represent more than 28% of Apple’s total quarterly revenue in its latest profit report, making it the company’s second largest revenue category after iPhone sales. Apple appealed the decision.
Meanwhile, CEO Tim Cook revealed during the company’s profits that President Donald Trump’s tariff policies would add about $ 900 million to Apple’s costs alone in the current quarter. When asked about future impacts, Cook said that forecasting after June was “very difficult” given the uncertain commercial environment.
In response, Apple is quickly reconfiguring its supply chain. Cook has announced that the bigger part of the iPhone sold in the US will now come from India, not from China, with other devices being obtained from Vietnam. Although this change demonstrates Apple’s supply chain, it comes with significant operating challenges and costs.
Perhaps the most for Apple’s long-term prospects is its uncomfortable AI strategy. In March, the company confirmed that its most anticipated features of Apple Intelligence – especially Siri’s improvements – will be delayed until next year. These delayed opportunities that include Siri’s ability to understand the personal context in applications and to perform complex actions are in a prominent place in television commercials that Apple has been downloading since.
Like the influential technology blogger John Gruber of the bold fiery ball, he marked in a post a sinisterly entitled “Something rotten in the State of Cupertino”, what makes Apple AI so worrying is how they break down decades of the company’s reliability. Gruer called the situation “fiasco” in which Apple essentially promotes the capabilities of AI that it cannot deliver. He noticed that Apple had built an exceptional record for authenticity for 30 years – if it showed or promised a feature, customers could rely on it as planned. The fact that Apple never demonstrates “Siri’s more pressed features” in the press, even in controlled environments, suggests that they may have been far less developed than Apple users have led to believe.
This AI Stumble is especially problematic as competitors like Google, Microsoft and Openai continue to progress their artificial intelligence suggestions. For a company that has positioned itself as the leader of innovation, the lag in what many consider to be the next technological revolution, threatens to undermine the position of the Apple Premium brand.
Wall Street has noticed these approximation problems. Apple’s shares have declined around 20% so far, with a legal failure to cause another sharp decline earlier this month. For investors accustomed to Apple’s seemingly irresistible growth, failures raise questions about the company’s future trajectory.
For a company built on controlling everything from silicon to the window, these external challenges represent an unfamiliar territory. In a twist of irony, Fortnite on Epic Games will return to the iOS App Store this week after almost five years of absence – albeit with a creative solution. As Apple discontinued Epic developers account in 2020, CEO Tim Sweey has confirmed that they will use their Swedish auxiliary account to send Fortnite to the US Application Store.
In the meantime, Sweeney has offered Apple a “peace proposal”: expand changes in court around the world and EPIC will be eliminated all court disputes. For iOS users who are unable to play one of the most popular video games in the world since 2020, this is probably this silver lining in Apple Storm Cloud for a year.
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