Summary
Jefferies equity analyst Edison Lee joins Bloomberg Tech to explain his firm’s downgrade of Apple from hold to underperform, with a revised price target of $263.66. The downgrade follows supply chain checks indicating that Apple’s anticipated all-glass “glass wing” iPhone — a twentieth-anniversary product slated for 2027 that would eliminate the metal mid-frame and physical buttons in favor of haptics — has been canceled due to low production yields.
The deeper story Lee tells is structural: AI companies have displaced Apple as the dominant customer at TSMC and among major memory suppliers including SK Hynix and Samsung. Advanced node capacity at TSMC, previously anchored by Apple’s iPhone volume, is now being claimed by AI firms willing to pay higher prices. The same dynamic is playing out in high-bandwidth memory markets. Lee argues this isn’t mismanagement but a fundamental realignment of the supply chain around AI demand — one that leaves Apple competing for constrained capacity at a pricing disadvantage.
The interview also addresses Tim Cook’s planned September 1 CEO transition to John Turner and how Apple’s medium-term product roadmap — which depends on premium form factors to push average selling prices higher and offset rising component costs — intersects with these supply chain pressures. Lee sees maintaining ASP growth as critical for Apple to absorb the cost headwinds created by the AI-driven compute supercycle.
📺 Source: Bloomberg Tech · Published August 10, 2026
🏷️ Format: Interview
