M.G. Siegler
Technology writer and investor who publishes Spyglass, a newsletter covering Apple, Google, Microsoft, Meta and the wider AI and consumer tech landscape.
“The tables have turned on them because of this AI world that we're in right now. NVIDIA is on the top of the hill in terms of who the manufacturers will work with and who the chip makers want to work with. And so Apple's in this sort of precarious position that they haven't been in, where they have to be a price taker in some ways rather than the one that's dominating and bending these suppliers to their will.”
Big Technology · Tech Strategy & Big Tech · November 2026
Context
Asked about the storm clouds around Apple's business after its latest earnings, Siegler explains that rising memory costs from the AI buildout are squeezing Apple's margins and that it has lost its old supply-chain leverage.
Transcript
we're doing it. Well, we did it right here. Yeah.
…to deal with. And that's starting to show up and hit the margin. So take us into your analysis of the Apple business and where you think the stumbling blocks might be. And then we're going to get your, we have the iPhone duo here. So that's coming, but we want to talk about the picture first.
Yeah. So, right, Apple's earnings were interesting this quarter. Obviously, the numbers look good, but as you're alluding to, like there's storm clouds there just sort of hovering. And, you know, Apple's in a great position right now. I believe currently even, they're back at top the market cap chart. Some of that is obviously NVIDIA falling precipitously over the past couple of days due to just the various macro events going on with the election and whatnot. But a lot of it is obviously all tied to AI. And Apple has, I think, situated themselves well, as we've talked about sort of over the past several, many months at this point, because yeah, they are basically a counter bet against sort of all of the CapEx spend that's been going on with their big tech peers. And so they're positioned well. They're maybe the last remaining $5 trillion company as we speak. I don't know where NVIDIA is right now. But then, again, there's these like looming storm clouds because as we saw in the earnings report, the margins are going the wrong way for the first time in a long time. I think it was two quarters ago they hit over 50% overall gross margin. Their highest margin ever. Yeah, which is incredible…
maybe Apple's only hope is that data centers are actually banned in the United States. I mean, yes. They can get that ramp cheaper. That's sort of
exactly the position that we're in right now. And I do think that that's sort of a fascinating counter bet now if you want to go forward with it. Because, yeah, if everything that's happening macro-wise and politically ends up slowing down sort of the AI whirlwind that we've been in, Apple's…
Right. So that's the silver lining, and that's where that countercycle bet comes in. But we can talk a little bit about how things have mechanically changed for Apple concretely, right? So Turnis talked about how the company is going to have these challenges and we don't really know when they're…
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