Apple Reports Decline in Sales and Profit Amid iPhone Struggles in China

Difficulties have been piling up for Apple. In recent months, it has been sued by the Justice Department, fined by European regulators and challenged by the resurgence of a Chinese smartphone competitor.

On Thursday, the company added to its list of problems, reporting that its business was in a slump.

Apple said sales fell 4percent to $90.8 billion for the three months that ended in March. Revenue from iPhones, iPads and wearables like the Apple Watch declined from the same quarter last year, while sales of software and services rose. Profit fell 2 percent to $23.64 billion, Apple’s first quarterly decline in a year.

Apple’s struggles were most worrisome in China, the world’s second-largest smartphone market, where sales fell 8 percent. The iPhone’s popularity there has waned since Huawei, which the Trump administration restricted from working with U.S. technology firms, introduced a new smartphone with 5G abilities last year. Last quarter, Apple’s share of smartphones sold in China fell 4 percent, according to Counterpoint, a technology research firm.

Shares of Apple rose 6.5 percent because the results slightly exceeded Wall Street predictions for quarterly sales and profit and were better in China than feared. The company said that it would repurchase $110 billion of stock and that its sales were on track to increase in the current quarter.

The poor results stood in contrast to the strong performances of other big tech companies. Over the past two weeks, Amazon reported that its quarterly profits had tripled, Microsoft increased quarterly sales from cloud computing by a third and Alphabet, Google’s parent company, announced that it