Apple Posts Record $111.2B Q2 as TSMC 3nm Capacity Crunch Throttles iPhone 17 Supply

Apple on Thursday, April 30, 2026 reported fiscal Q2 revenue of $111.2 billion, up 17% year-over-year, with diluted EPS of $2.01 (up 22%) and Services revenue at an all-time high of $30.98 billion, beating Wall Street’s $30.4B consensus, according to Apple’s newsroom release and CNBC’s coverage. iPhone revenue jumped 22% to $57.99 billion, a March-quarter record, on what CEO Tim Cook described as iPhone 17 demand being “off the charts.” Gross margin came in at 49.3% versus 48.4% expected, and the print sent shares higher in after-hours trading despite a soft hardware guide.

The catch sits one layer below the topline. On the call, Cook acknowledged that supply constraints — not demand — capped iPhone 17 unit volume in the quarter, with the bottleneck tied directly to TSMC’s 3nm and 2nm capacity. According to MacRumors and 9to5Mac’s read of management commentary, TSMC has prioritized AI accelerator orders from NVIDIA, AMD and Broadcom on its leading-edge nodes, squeezing allocations for Apple’s A19 and A19 Pro processors that ship in iPhone 17 and the new MacBook Neo. Apple guided that the silicon shortage is unlikely to ease materially before fiscal 2027.

The earnings reframe a structural tension that has been building since CES 2026: the AI capex super-cycle is now visibly competing with consumer electronics for the same TSMC wafer slots. NVIDIA has reserved the bulk of TSMC’s CoWoS-L advanced packaging capacity through 2028, and TSMC’s overall leading-edge utilization is running near 100% per the company’s Q1 print. Apple’s response is twofold: a tighter capex commitment to TSMC’s incoming Arizona fab — which the foundry confirmed last week will host CoWoS and 3D-IC capacity before 2029 — and an internal push to qualify a second source for select non-leading-edge silicon. Investors will be watching whether the same constraint shows up across HBM and DRAM in the broader smartphone OEM print this earnings season.