Strategy Analytics: Apple Shipped an Estimated 65.9 Million iPhones in Holiday Quarter

65.9 million phones sold in the holiday quarter. How will they ever recover?

15% down, and it’s the tip of the iceberg. BlackBerry RIM didn’t collapse their sales in a year. Nokia didn’t disappear overnight. Motorola didn’t vanish in a quarter or two.

15% decline is nothing to laugh at or ignore. The massive PR failures under Cook is nothing to laugh at.

The more reason it is an embarrassing shameful fact that Apple is upping their prices and neglecting the Mac. 20 billions of profit in one quarter and Timmy telling you that he doesn’t care about numbers and that the customer comes first :rolleyes:

I want to believe :(

Of course Tim says the customer comes first, just like the cow comes first for every dairy farmer on the planet. Because Apple is milking their loyal customer base for everything they got. Next year the prices will be even higher to offset the even lower numbers sold.

15% down, and it’s the tip of the iceberg. BlackBerry RIM didn’t collapse their sales in a year. Nokia didn’t disappear overnight. Motorola didn’t vanish in a quarter or two.

15% decline is nothing to laugh at or ignore. The massive PR failures under Cook is nothing to laugh at.

Apple is moving to a services company. Sure, iPhone revenue was down, but what about the 19% growth in non iPhone? iPad, Mac, Services, and wearables were up HUGE. So much that Apple reported $20B in net income, the same as last year. That means despite China absolutely falling off a cliff and a large decline in iPhone revenue, Apple was able to be JUST as profitable because of their strength in other businesses.

That’s because Apple is becoming less reliant on iPhone sales.

The installed base went from 1.3 to 1.4B over that time, including 900M iPhones. This shows people aren’t leaving. They just aren’t upgrading as fast.

The problem RIMM and Nokia had was the iPhone. There is nothing that has changed the industry, so it’s not comparable. People are keeping their phones longer, not moving away from iPhone. Those companies didn’t have the ecosystem or $100B in non iPhone revenue like Apple does.

Are you predicting Apple will lose 90% of its value like Nokia and RIMM? What is the time frame? Shouldn’t you be shorting the stock? Be specific. Don’t just throw stuff out.
[doublepost=1548817392][/doublepost]

You must have selective memory because RIM dropped over 20% YOY from their peak, and it accelerated after that. Moreover, RIM’s decline was during an economic expansion. And even in its heyday, RIM never achieved the profitability of Apple.

And it dropped so much because the industry was being disrupted by the iPhone.

What is disrupting the industry now? Pretty much market saturation, not a product Apple is missing the boat on and playing catch-up.

This is what these arm chair analysts miss in their false narratives. There is some weakness in China and iPhone in a quarter and all the sudden Apple is doomed. “Tip of the iceberg” talk and ignoring everything positive. It's comical.

Let me think. What would an Apple loyalist say to this?
[LIST=1]
* Decline in unit sale is irrelevant. (Despite iPhone sales account for majority of revenue)
* Apple is a 'service company' now. (Despite growth in service revenue is less than decline in iPhone sale)
* This report is fake. No one knows the answer, because Apple no longer publish unit sale.

15% down, and it’s the tip of the iceberg. BlackBerry RIM didn’t collapse their sales in a year. Nokia didn’t disappear overnight. Motorola didn’t vanish in a quarter or two.

15% decline is nothing to laugh at or ignore. The massive PR failures under Cook is nothing to laugh at.

The $84B Apple delivered is nothing to laugh at either. Citing BB and Nokia, two organizations that unlike Apple, didn’t change with the times is a false equivalency.

Massive PR failures are not showing in the numbers, unless one considers $84B a dismal financial failure.

15% down, and it’s the tip of the iceberg. BlackBerry RIM didn’t collapse their sales in a year. Nokia didn’t disappear overnight. Motorola didn’t vanish in a quarter or two.

15% decline is nothing to laugh at or ignore. The massive PR failures under Cook is nothing to laugh at.

The problem with both BB/RIM and Nokia is that both companies were unable or unwilling to respond to significant changes in the market. Both double downed on their existing platforms and bled market share until it was too late to change course.

Apple under Tim Cook, probably more-so than under Steve Jobs, is willing to experiment with different product options to change course. I think how Cook has handled the iPad line is a good example of this. A few years ago, critics claimed the iPad was doomed due declining sales and saturation of the tablet market. However, Cook’s managed to deliver products with high ASPs to stabilize revenue, while they market the cheaper option to go after mass market.

15% down, and it’s the tip of the iceberg. BlackBerry RIM didn’t collapse their sales in a year. Nokia didn’t disappear overnight. Motorola didn’t vanish in a quarter or two.

15% decline is nothing to laugh at or ignore. The massive PR failures under Cook is nothing to laugh at.

You must have selective memory because RIM dropped over 20% YOY from their peak, and it accelerated after that. Moreover, RIM’s decline was during an economic expansion. And even in its heyday, RIM never achieved the profitability of Apple.

65.9 million phones sold in the holiday quarter. How will they ever recover?

The good thing for Apple is, it’s not that the product is bad - it’s the price. All of this could change going forward if they wanted. But Timmy is money hungry, though. Hell, a $100 drop with next year gen devices will do wonders.

What’s the evidence for prices being too high? It can’t be the record iPhone revenue Apple recorded in regions other than China.

Cook and co. foresaw the dual-pronged problem—market saturation and the lengthening of the upgrade cycle—three to four years ago. So they came up with the strategy of adding a “super premium” tier to the lineup. The higher ASPs are compensating for the lower unit volume beautifully. It was (is) an extremely well-managed transition.

I sense a bit of drama... !!

More than a bit.

These people focusing on YOY percentage decline are being obtuse. I think it’s time for a remedial math lesson here:

Percentage change = (final - initial) / initial

That means it’s just two data points and a scaled measure of their separation. Thus, if the “initial” data point was crazy large...of course you’ll get a large percentage decline! Derp.

People are overlooking that compared to two years ago, this is a net 5% increase. Last year was just a crazy crazy good quarter. This year is less crazy good.
[doublepost=1548832244][/doublepost]

Sure, and you could be right. But to put some numbers down;

Apple achieved 13% of year-over-year growth in Q1 2018. However, it achieved -5% of y/y growth in Q1 2019.

Yes, it is a negative 5.

See above. This is why YOY estimates are pretty lousy indicators. Look at the trend line and tell me what you see.

Now could this be the beginning of the end? I mean, sure. But the evidence supports that no more or less than it being a blip. Also, we knew revenue would slow eventually. It can’t grow at the rate it was indefinitely. But to call that “Apple’s fault” as many on here are doing ignores the many exogenous factors.