Apple's memory warning hits markets as fridge hacks and €1.3B in deals mark a nervous week

The memory squeeze is the story. Apple's new chief executive, John Ternus, told a conference call that "what we're seeing with memory pricing right now is unprecedented". He predicted fourth-quarter memory costs would run higher than in the previous three months, according to The Guardian's report on 3 November. Apple's shares fell 2.75% in after-hours trading as the company warned the costs would eat into margins.

The backdrop is a demand surge from AI datacentres that the industry has taken to calling "RAMageddon". Apple has already raised prices, on iPads and MacBooks in June and on iPhones in September. Ternus said those rises "provided some offset" for the company. Apple reported earnings of $30.71bn, or $2.10 a share, for the July-September period. That was up 12% from $27.47bn, or $1.85 a share, a year earlier. Apple said earnings included five cents a share from tariff refunds. Analysts polled by FactSet had expected $1.99 a share on revenue of $113.4bn.

What the numbers say, and what they don't

Apple's results were "OK, if on the disappointing side", Ben Barringer, head of technology research at Quilter Cheviot, told The Guardian.

Revenue was up 12%, driven by iPhone sales and Mac Mini, with China growth he called strong. iPad and wearables disappointed, and services grew at 10%, below the group average. Jacob Bourne of Emarketer pointed to Apple's "tepid approach" to AI infrastructure spending as a factor in preserving cashflow. The memory warning lands in a market already jumpy. Separate coverage notes European shares sliding as the Apple margin warning fed a global tech rout. Those market reports are context rather than the peg here.

The inflation pressure is not confined to consumer hardware. On 3 November, Bull and Schwarz Digits announced a memorandum of understanding to build a European AI and cloud infrastructure ecosystem. Schwarz Digits will contribute its STACKIT cloud, and Bull will draw on its Angers factory for rack-scale AI production, according to HPCwire. The pitch is sovereignty and control over data. The economics are the same ones driving memory prices: a scramble for compute capacity that is not cheapening.

The fridge attack, and a cyber agency's warning

On Monday, supermarkets in Belgium, Estonia, Ireland, Finland, Luxembourg, the Netherlands and Sweden reported problems with refrigeration systems. Temperatures rose as high as 50C (122F), The Guardian reported on 3 November.

Ahold Delhaize said dozens of its Delhaize stores in Belgium and Luxembourg were affected and food had to be discarded. Colruyt Group said five Spar stores in Belgium were targeted. Carrefour told the BBC that 15 Belgian stores were attacked. Intermarché said 15 of its 153 Belgian stores were hit, according to CNBC's 3 November report. IKEA said an incident affected fridges and freezers at its Mons store between Sunday and Monday. ICA in Sweden confirmed an incident at a limited number of stores on networks outside its central systems.

The UK's National Cyber Security Centre said it was working with affected companies and that the national impact was minimal. Its chief executive, Richard Horne, described the fridge attacks as the "foothills" of a larger cyberthreat.

Xavier Bellekens, chief executive of the cyberdefence firm Lupovis, told The Guardian his company had recorded 256 attempted attacks from 91 different sources between 20 October and 30 October. The attacks hit honeypot controls imitating Danfoss fridge controllers. Most authentication attempts used the manufacturer's factory-default credentials.

The money kept moving. Tech.eu reported on 3 November that Portuguese startup Granter raised €1.6M to expand its AI platform for public funding applications. On 2 November it reported that Roleo, founded by Veriff co-founder Janer Gorohhov, raised €2.9M. Tech.eu's weekly recap, published 2 November, counted more than 60 deals worth over €1.3 billion across Europe last week. AI took €815.6 million of it and the UK €1 billion. Cheaper hardware is not on that list.