Apple News, January 2026

January kicked off the year in style: Apple Card switches banks, Brussels finalizes the new EU App Store rules, a brand new AirTag arrived, and Apple posted its best quarter ever. Here’s the roundup.

Apple Card moves from Goldman Sachs to JPMorgan Chase

On January 7, Goldman Sachs and Apple announced that the Apple Card is moving to JPMorgan Chase, ending a seven year partnership with Goldman. The transition is expected to take about two years and should be complete by early 2028; Goldman is transferring roughly 20 billion dollars in card balances at a 1 billion dollar discount. For users, nothing changes about the card itself for now.

New App Store rules take effect in the EU

Starting January 1, a new “single business model” applies in the European Union for all developers: the old Core Technology Fee has been replaced by an acquisition fee, a store services fee (Tier 1 now 5% instead of 13%), and a Core Technology Commission of 5% for apps that use external payment links. Advocacy groups like the Coalition for App Fairness still consider the new terms insufficient under the Digital Markets Act.

AirTag 2 announced

At the end of January, Apple introduced the second generation AirTag: up to 50% greater range for Precision Finding, a louder speaker audible up to twice as far, and, for the first time, Precision Finding support via Apple Watch Series 9 and later. Price: 29 dollars each, or 99 dollars for a four pack.

Record quarter for Apple

On January 29, Apple announced its results for the first fiscal quarter of 2026: record revenue of 143.8 billion dollars (+16% year over year) and net profit of 42.1 billion dollars. iPhone posted record revenue of 85.3 billion dollars, Services grew to 30 billion dollars, and revenue in Greater China rose 38% to 25.53 billion dollars.

That was the Apple news for January 2026. See you next month for another roundup.