Apple Can’t Make the iPhone Duo Fast Enough, and Its New CEO Won’t Say When That Ends
Apple just had its best September quarter ever, and its hottest phone wasn’t even in the numbers. The iPhone Duo went on sale in October, and Apple still can’t make enough of them.
On his first earnings call as Apple’s CEO, John Ternus reported record revenue of $114.5 billion for the quarter that ended September 26. Afterward, he told Reuters that the iPhone Duo “is constrained as of today” and that Apple is “not able to predict when supply and demand will be in balance.”
Some headlines put it as shortages with no end in sight. That’s a fair read, but it’s the headline’s wording, not his. Ternus didn’t promise a fix date, and he didn’t say demand is endless either.
The numbers
Here’s how the September quarter compares with a year ago, from Apple’s results release:
| Category | Q4 FY26 | Q4 FY25 | Change |
|---|---|---|---|
| Total revenue | $114.5B | $102.5B | +12% |
| iPhone | $57.6B | $49.0B | +17% |
| Services | $31.6B | $28.8B | +10% |
| Mac | $10.8B | $8.7B | +24% |
| Wearables, Home and Accessories | $8.3B | $9.0B | −8% |
| iPad | $6.2B | $7.0B | −10% |
| Diluted EPS | $2.10 | $1.85 | +14% |
iPhone and Mac did the heavy lifting. Services hit an all-time high, and Apple says fiscal 2026 was its best year ever, at $479 billion in revenue.
What Apple said about the iPhone Duo
Ternus said on the call that Apple has been “thrilled with the early response from reviewers and customers.” COO Sabih Khan gave the clearest supply answer: the ramp is going well, but it’s “really hard to predict” when supply will catch demand. You can read both in the call transcript.
- No Duo sales are in these results. The phone went on sale in October, after the quarter closed, so the first real Duo numbers arrive with the December quarter.
- Wait times are long. 9to5Mac reports Apple Store shipping estimates have sat at late January since pre-orders sold out on October 16.
- The display issue is still around. Ternus told Reuters “a very small percentage” of units have come back with display problems, and Apple is replacing them. We covered that issue in iPhone Duo Screens Are Cracking.
The catch: memory costs
Apple expects December-quarter revenue to grow 7% to 10%, a range CFO Kevan Parekh said reflects “constrained supply.” But it guided gross margin down to 45% to 46%, from 47.9% this quarter, and blamed most of the drop on higher memory costs. MacRumors notes Apple also expects Mac and iPad to stay constrained, mainly because of memory.
That’s the same memory crunch hitting PC builders. When even Apple is paying up for RAM, nobody is getting a break.
PCGeek’s take
A sold-out phone with a two-month wait is a great problem for Apple to have. It also means the hype hasn’t been tested yet. Until the December quarter results, nobody outside Apple knows how many Duos have shipped, and a supply crunch can make demand look bigger than it is.
If you want one, the honest advice is simple: order early, expect to wait, and check the display carefully when it arrives. If you’re on the fence, waiting costs you nothing, because you couldn’t get one this month anyway.
Would you wait until January for an iPhone Duo, or stick with what you have? Tell us in the comments.
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