“Everyone knows the iPhone 6 is big,” Miriam Gottfried reports for The Wall Street Journal. “But investors might not appreciate just how far its sphere of influence extends.”
“Looked at in the short term, retail spending in the U.S. is effectively a zero-sum game. And when one company suddenly takes a bigger share of consumers’ wallets, others feel the pain,” Gottfried reports. “Wells Fargo estimates that U.S. consumers will spend nearly $14 billion on iPhones from launch until the end of this year. That equates to almost two-thirds of the year-over-year growth in U.S. retail spending last holiday season.”
“In other words, any extra money consumers spend on iPhones this year is money they likely won’t be spending on other items like clothing, accessories and home furnishings,” Gottfried reports. “And while pain during the all-important fourth quarter is bad enough, it may not end there. The release of the Apple Watch next spring threatens first-quarter sales, too. Wells Fargo estimates Apple will sell six million watches in the first year after its launch. At $349 each, that would add up to an additional $2 billion headwind for retail”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: As we wrote earlier today:
“Merry Christmas, Samsung!”