“The market’s anticipation of big sales from Apple’s new iPhones drove its shares higher this year, but now one Wall Street firm says demand for its smartphones will be slightly worse than it expected,” Tae Kim reports for CNBC. “UBS said its recent survey of consumers pointed to weaker demand for the iPhone, but any financial downside will partly be offset by higher pricing.”
We present results from our semi-annual UBS Evidence Lab Smartphone survey of 6,700 smartphone buyers across five countries. Buying intentions are flattish from a year ago. We interpret the results as a signal that Apple has maintained its position around the world but unit growth could be more muted than originally expected… We think growth will likely slow in the US and Europe given more muted purchase intent. — UBS analyst Steven Milunovich in a note to clients Sunday entitled “UBS Evidence Lab Survey: Supercycle? Not So Much, but Narrative Shifts to Monetizing the Base”
“As a result, Milunovich lowered his 2018 iPhone unit sales growth forecast to 10 percent from 12 percent,” Kim reports. “The analyst reaffirmed his buy rating and his $190 price target for Apple shares, representing 9 percent upside to Friday’s close.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: 10% unit sales growth at this stage of the game (smartphone saturation) is a supercycle.
Steven Milunovich has been wrong about AAPL as many times as he has opened his mouth. Why anyone would listen to him in particular, over more accurate analysts, is beyond me.
Lol. They never learn. After 10 years of being wrong, you’d think they would get it.
Hey Im still waitinggggg on the Apple Television Gene Munster was promising….and remember you should have sold alllll your shares when they reached $100
“Everybody” wanting a smartphone already has one………mmmkay!
It’s worth bearing in mind that Apple has reduced the margins paid to third party sellers of iPhones. This will have two main effects, which in turn will lead to other consequences.
The first effect is that resellers will be less inclined to push iPhones when other manufacturers offer them greater margins and commissions.
Another effect is that more customers are likely to buy directly from Apple because it’s often quicker to get a new iPhone directly from Apple than it is through a reseller.
The consequences of this shift in sales will be that fewer iPhone sales show up via resellers and more will be sold via Apple. As a result, gathering data about sales through third party sellers and extrapolating is going to be even more prone to error than it previously was. Furthermore with Apple selling more iPhone directly, their profit margin will be even greater than before.
People have the choice between believing the likes of Milunovich, who has not had much of a track record for predicting Apple’s performance and who will now have less data to base his guesses on. Alternatively people can take note of Apple’s spectacular on-the-record predictions for the current quarter. Apple has detailed data to hand and Apple’s previous guidance has either been met or exceeded for many years, so I feel entirely comfortable about trusting Apple on this matter.
Well Apple shares today are worth, $174.82. Too bad I had to go to another site, being able to check it here was one of my favorite features.
Do you not have an apple device? You can check it on that quite easily, it’s built in.
There’s an app for that.
I have thought the same thing many times but then I realized that the people who demand perfection like MDN are usually the last to offer it themselves. Waiting for MDN to fix its site isn’t worth it. Political bS is much more important to them. And Google ads. Lots of Google ads. Hypocrites.
On my Mac I’m seeing the price of here AAPL between the article and the comments in what appears to be an advertising space. I don’t see it when using my IOS devices, but they have the app for that anyway.
Thanks everyone for the feedback.
Yes I can go to another site, or use an app to check, but it was nice, convenient and kinda fun to have it here and I’d sure like to have it back.
Pdn, this is MDN’s site and they can do what they want with it. Sure there are some things I’d like to see here (like a posting policy) and I’d love to share with the rest of the MDN community the secret to remove the ads from sight (I’ve tried to share this legal and ethical feature built in by Apple, but my posts with this tip have been subsequently removed, and that’s all right because I don’t expect MDN to enforce the freedom of speech here. Nevertheless over the years I’ve greatly deepened my appreciation for this site.
Meanwhile, I notice that expected delivery time for the 256 gig silver iPhone X I just tried to buy from Apple Store shows expected delivery date back up to 2-3 weeks. Methinks UBS is trying to justify its own survey dept.
I ordered two iPhone X units on Monday, Nov 6. Estimates were that I’d receive them around 19th of December. I had both on Friday of that week. I chalked it up to demand being lower than expected.
Okay MDN dudes, help me understand…why am I seeing THREE (3!) ads in this article for an Android phone? Come on MDN, there are tons and tons of product ads you can inject into these articles without them being products that directly compete with Apple core products.
I don’t think MDN has any control over what ads the ad widgits display. I currently see 7 practically identical ads for Virgin Mobile on this page.
The correct spelling is :
Anal-cyst