NEW YORK, January 6, 2026, 16:13 (ET) — After-hours
- Apple shares fell 1.8% to $262.34 on Tuesday, lagging the broader market.
- A BofA note flagged the slowest App Store revenue growth in about 11 quarters and kept a $325 target.
- Next in focus: the U.S. December jobs report on Jan. 9 and Apple’s fiscal Q1 results on Jan. 29.
Apple Inc shares fell 1.8% on Tuesday to $262.34, sliding as traders weighed fresh signals that App Store spending growth is cooling ahead of the iPhone maker’s next earnings report.
That matters because investors have leaned harder on services for proof Apple can grow beyond hardware cycles, and App Store trends often shape expectations for the company’s services line before official results.
With Apple valued at roughly 30 times earnings, a price-to-earnings multiple that shows how much investors pay for each dollar of profit, the stock can react sharply to small changes in growth assumptions.
Rate jitters have also crept back into the megacap trade. “The costs are going up not down in our forecast, because there’s inflation in chip costs and inflation in power costs,” Morgan Stanley strategist Andrew Sheets said, pointing to AI-related spending pressures that investors fear could keep borrowing costs elevated. 1
BofA Securities reiterated a buy rating and a $325 price target, estimating App Store revenue rose to about $8.6 billion in Apple’s fiscal first quarter, up 6.8% from a year earlier, based on Sensor Tower developer data. The firm called it the slowest quarterly growth rate in about 11 quarters and highlighted weaker year-on-year trends in China. 2
Apple, meanwhile, disclosed a new services-and-content push around its Vision Pro headset. The company said Spectrum Front Row will stream select Los Angeles Lakers games in Apple Immersive starting Jan. 9, and that Apple Vision Pro with the M5 chip starts at $3,499 in the United States. 3
The pullback came even as U.S. stocks edged higher, with investors turning to this week’s labor-market data for clues on the path of Federal Reserve policy. The Labor Department’s Employment Situation report for December is scheduled for release on Friday, Jan. 9 at 8:30 a.m. ET. 4
A risk for Apple bulls is that third-party App Store data does not always map cleanly to Apple’s reported services revenue, and China remains a swing factor for both usage and device demand. Legal uncertainty also hangs over the App Store: Apple customers have asked a U.S. appeals court to reinstate a proposed class action accusing the company of inflating prices by monopolizing the app market, Reuters reported. 5
Technically, Apple traded between $262.18 and $267.56 on Tuesday, leaving round-number support near $260 in view after the slide. Investors will next parse the Jan. 9 jobs report for rate signals and then Apple’s fiscal first-quarter results on Jan. 29, when the company is scheduled to host a conference call at 5 p.m. ET. 6
