Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
Good morning from the Financial Times. Today is Friday, May 1st, and this is your FT News Briefing. Apple's iPhone sales are booming, and the energy shock from the war in Iran is complicating things for central bankers. Plus, Tinder has been looking for love in all the wrong places, but the app is trying to turn things around.
Tinder was one of the first apps to break onto the scene, but with other apps coming on, many users have decided that if they are to find that special person, they're more likely to do it on one of Tinder's competitors.
I'm Mark Filippino, and here's the news you need to start your day. Apple reported quarterly earnings yesterday and things, things are good. The smartphone maker saw about a 17% annual rise in revenue to the end of March. That's a little bit more than $111 billion for the quarter.
Chapter 2: What are the latest updates on Apple's iPhone sales?
And Apple is thanking what it calls its most popular iPhone model ever for the success. Apple CEO Tim Cook said there has been extraordinary demand for the iPhone 17. iPhone sales rose more than 20% last quarter. This is the first earnings report since Apple announced that Cook is stepping down in September. He'll be replaced by hardware chief John Ternes.
Inflation caused by the Iran war's energy shock hasn't just forced policymakers in the U.S. to keep interest rates on hold. Central banks across Europe yesterday voted to keep their borrowing costs steady, too. And this is in the face of ongoing uncertainty. The European Central Bank held its benchmark rate at 2%, while the Bank of England stood firm at 3.75%.
Sam Fleming is the FT's economics editor. He's been digging into all the data and decisions, and he joins me now to discuss it all. Hi, Sam. Hi, Mark. So we got fresh data yesterday that showed Eurozone inflation jumped more than expected to 3% in April. That's the highest level since 2023. How worried are central bankers about these price rises?
To an extent, the price rises are inevitable because the increase in energy price is immediately going to start getting reflected in fuel prices and potentially prices of food and other commodities. So we would expect a movement in headline inflation in any case. What the central bankers are more looking for is whether there are so-called second round effects.
So does this start to affect wage setting? Does it start to affect the wages that workers demand? Does it compel companies to start raising the prices of other products in the economy? And does that create a kind of self-fulfilling momentum in inflation? Now, I don't think we see any of that yet. It's way too soon. But they are worried because clearly there's a risk of that happening.
And let's face it, a lot of the central banks around the world went into this energy crisis with inflation, which was well above a target. So they're not coming into this in a great position.
Yeah, let's talk about where central banks are positioned and what they can do about them. Because unlike the Fed, which has a dual mandate of price stability and full employment, other central banks really only worry about inflation. What tools do these central banks have to address the shock we're talking about and how prepared are they to use them?
Initially, the tools they're using are communication, setting out scenarios for how the energy crisis might unfold, and expressing a willingness and a readiness to raise interest rates if necessary to quell increases in inflation expectations. and that they will not let inflation get out of hand. But in the end, they will have to follow this stuff up.
I think the signal that we got from Christine Lagarde, the president of the ECB yesterday, is that the ECB is seriously considering the need potentially to increase interest rates. I think it's possible that we could see a rise as soon as this summer. The messaging from the Bank of England, policymakers went into the meeting far more cautious about sending strong signals that rates could
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Chapter 3: How are central banks responding to the energy shock from the Iran war?
So he's come in with a new vision for not only Match Group, but also Tinder. And he said to me that quite clearly the problem with Tinder had been it didn't innovate enough. It was first onto the scene. It had a bit of a monopoly. And that allowed it to get complacent, he said. Its left-right swipe feature contributed to a kind of gamified offering.
It made users feel like dating was very impersonal. And ultimately, Raskov said that that had put users, including women, off the app because they simply didn't feel like they were getting what they needed.
The other thing to note, of course, is that dating apps have always been subject to criticism for allowing bad actors and scammers on their apps and not introducing enough features to help prevent that. And Raskov had identified that as a key problem, particularly with female users who didn't feel as safe using the app as maybe they had done on its competitors.
So what is he hoping to do to turn things around?
Since he's come in, he's launched a wave of new features to appeal not only to female daters, but also to younger dates as well, those in Gen Z. And that includes double dates, that includes allowing people to match based on shared interests, such as music.
It also has seen them launch pioneering new features, although it's in trial phase at the moment, such as video calls, so you can suss out the person you're going to go on a date with before you actually meet them. And ultimately, they've also put a huge amount of investment into trust and safety. Tinder has become one of the first apps to introduce mandatory facial recognition for new users.
And they can check whether, A, you've been banned from the app before for bad behavior, and B, whether your face actually does match who you say you are.
Kieran, even if he fixes these issues with Tinder, we discussed earlier on that there seems to be a larger problem going on with dating apps. Is this kind of just the direction that we're going in?
Yeah, I think there's a lot of lazy stereotypes that get out there about dating apps. Match Group and Bumble have lost a lot of market value since they were first publicly listed. But that's not necessarily because the sector is struggling. That is because they are struggling in the face of new arrivals. We're in a period of real change in the sector. It's matured now.
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