Apple iPhone 7 Sales Hide A Serious Problem

What if people fall out of love with the iPhone and stop buying Apple’s smartphone? With so much of Apple’s business built around the handsets, any sustained fall in sales would not be welcome inside Cupertino. Unfortunately for Apple the evidence points to just that scenario.

With Apple declining to reveal how many iPhones were sold over the first weekend, it has been left to analysts and marketers to work with third-party data and come up with an answer. The ever-reliable Ming-Chi Kuo at KGI Securities has been looking 

Click Here

at the volume of smartphone shipments to provide the geekerati with the latest data point.

Kuo’s data matches with those available from other sources using different methodologies. The iPhone 7 Plus sales are better than expected, but the overall volumes are being dragged down by lower shipments of the smaller iPhone 7.

As noted previously on Forbes, Tim Cook and his team have been doing their best to dampen down expectations around the first weekend of sales of the latest smartphones. Online sales through the Apple website were not shipped during the opening weekend, network partners had less stock to sell and it was almost impossible to walk up to an Apple Store on launch day and pick up a handset without a pre-order.

Click Here

Every launch is different and every launch will have something that dilutes the power of a direct comparison. But it’s unlikely that this launch is significantly different to others. Analysts know this and make corrections in their work. Kuo’s track record is exemplary both in predicting new hardware and SKU differences, and in dealing with shipment numbers. The various data sets are all pointing to a similar conclusion around the weaker historical performance of the iPhone 7 and iPhone 7 Plus.