Apple on Thursday disclosed its iPhone sales dipped slightly during the holiday-season quarter, signaling a sluggish start to the trendsetting company’s effort to catch up to the rest of Big Tech in the race to bring artificial intelligence to the masses.

The iPhone missed expectations in the fiscal first quarter ended December 28, falling 0.8 per cent from the same period a year earlier.

Apple executives on Thursday forecast relatively strong sales growth, a sign the company will recover from a dip in iPhone sales as it rolls out artificial intelligence features. The forecast comes after Apple delivered a slight drop in iPhone revenues for the holiday shopping quarter and lagged Wall Street estimates,