Morgan Stanley sees blowout iPhone sales in March quarter

“Katy Huberty doubles down on her supercycle thesis, dismissing recent reports of iPhone X production cuts as ‘supply chain noise,'” Philip Elmer-DeWitt writes for Apple 3.0.

P.E.D. reports, “From a note to clients that landed in my inbox Tuesday: ‘we believe investors now expect March quarter guidance that implies 55-60M iPhone units compared to current sell-side consensus of 62M. We believe both buy- and sell-side consensus are unreasonable in light of current March quarter iPhone build plans of 64M, according to MS Greater China Technology Hardware analyst Sharon Shih. Furthermore, Apple typically beats the supply chain builds by 18%, on average, over the past five years suggesting reported iPhone units could be meaningfully higher than 64M.'”

“Her model has Apple selling $60.8 billion worth iPhones in the March quarter, up from an estimated $58.2 billion in December (and up 88% year over year),” P.E.D. writes. “That makes her an outlier. As near as I can tell, the rest of the herd has iPhone sales slowing, as usual, in March.”

Read more in the full article here.

MacDailyNews Take: If this comes to pass, it’s going to be quite the Chinese New year for Apple and the iPhone!

[Thanks to MacDailyNews Readers “Fred Mertz” and “Dan K.” for the heads up.]

14 Comments

  1. Anybody getting yellow/brown tints on lower parts of iphones – new iphone 8 (yesterday) and it’s there. Turned off everything / turned on everything to fix – no avail it’s there…

    thoughts?

      1. So, you think Kate’s assessment is pure hogwash like every other Wall Street analysts’s assessment? Good for you. I like the way you think. It’s so linear, predictable, so flawless in its ideology. It’s pure and undefiled by outside thought and ideas. You certainly have earned your Apple fanboy merit bagdge. Wear it proudly.

  2. Quite the disparity between Huberty and Bernstein’s Tony Sacconaghi’s very low-ball assessment (which is primarily why AAPL tanked today). The earnings call will really be interesting and a revelation for the analyst who’s wrong. I’m hoping Huberty, who’s really been quite the AAPL cheerleader for a while, is correct.

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