Chinese firm DeepSeek's artificial intelligence chatbot has soared to the top of the Apple Store's download charts, stunning industry insiders and analysts with its ability to match its US competitors.

DeepSeek, a Chinese-made AI chatbot, soared to the top of the Apple Store's download charts, stunning analysts with its ability to match US competitors. | TAG24

According to DeepSeek’s own privacy policy, the company collects users’ keystrokes, text and audio input, uploaded files, feedback, chat history and other content for the purpose of training its AI models and may share that information with law enforcement and public authorities at its discretion.

Companies and government agencies around the world are moving to restrict their employees’ access to the tools recently released by the Chinese artificial-intelligence startup DeepSeek, according to the cybersecurity firms hired to help protect their systems.

Apple’s all-important holiday quarter was something of a mixed bag. For one, Apple posted what it called it’s “best quarter ever” with revenue of $124.3 billion, up 4 percent year over year. However, the iPhone stumbled a bit as sales in China took a tumble.

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As Wall Street worries about the lower sales in China, Apple CEO Apple CEO Tim Cook said he is "very comfortable" with the company's channel inventory. Cook said in the beginning of the call that over half of Apple's revenue decline in China was driven by a change in channel inventory,

During its first quarter earnings call, Tim Cook again gave special attention to Apple's performance in emerging markets, particularly in India, the second largest smartphone market in the world, and the Middle East.

Apple's much-anticipated sales in Greater China fell to $18.5 billion, down 11% from $20.8 billion in the year-ago fiscal first quarter. That was also below Wall Street's estimates. According to FactSet,

When Apple reported its December quarter earnings on Thursday, it revealed that China sales had dropped 11.1% on an annual basis. Cook told analysts that over half of the decline was due to inventory issues.

Apple reported $18.5 billion in sales in greater China last quarter, comfortably below consensus estimates of $20.9 billion.

Apple said that sales in China dropped in its latest quarter versus the prior year. Revenue in the Greater China segment fell to $18.5 billion in the first quarter, when analysts were expecting sales of $20.