apple report First-quarter earnings blowout Thursday, and forecast growth of up to 16% for the current quarter, in line with the period that just ended.

Apple said sales could be better if the company can secure enough chips to meet customer demand for iPhones.

“We expect total company revenue to grow 13% to 16% year over year in the March quarter, which is our best estimate for iPhone supply constraints in the quarter,” finance chief Kevan Parekh told analysts on Thursday.

During the company’s earnings call, analysts asked CEO Tim Cook several questions about Apple’s acquisition of memory components, whose prices have skyrocketed due to demand related to the chips needed for artificial intelligence data centers. This creates a Out of memory.

Instead of dwelling on memories, Cook focused on growing demand and the company’s lean inventory. He said the reason Apple can’t produce more iPhones is its advanced node manufacturing capabilities for its A-series and M-series chips, which the company calls SoCs, or systems on a chip.

Apple partners with Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. to produce its advanced node chips, and the company Leading node manufacturing market. Apple said on Thursday it was looking to manufacture on the company’s 3-nanometer node.

“The constraints we are facing are driven by the availability of advanced nodes that produce our SoCs, and we are currently seeing less than normal supply chain flexibility, in part due to our increased demand,” Cook said.

Cook said Apple was increasing supply and did not want to make predictions beyond March.

While this quarter’s supply shortage is related to advanced node chip manufacturing, Cook acknowledged that Apple will be affected by higher memory prices and that the company is considering “a range of options” to see what steps it can take. But he refused to disclose the specific situation of Apple catch The AI-driven shortage is affecting nearly every device manufacturer in the world.

“As always, we will consider a range of solutions,” Cook said.

Apple said it expects gross margin in the March quarter to be between 48% and 49%, with the midpoint higher than in the December quarter. Cook said rising memory prices had “minimal” impact on Apple in the December quarter, but had a greater impact in the March quarter.

Last year, Apple Announce It will cost more than $600 billion in the United States over five years, with much of that going to a handful of companies dedicated to making chips in the United States, including TSMC, which historically does most of its manufacturing in Taiwan.

On Thursday, Cook said Apple will purchase 20 billion chips from the United States in 2025, higher than the company’s previous target of 19 billion U.S. chips.

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