“Ahead of Apple’s upcoming quarterly earnings report, investment firm Piper Jaffray lowered iPhone shipment estimates to 55 million units for the current quarter, but maintains AAPL is the year’s top stock pick,” Mikey Campbell reports for AppleInsider.
“In a note to investors on Monday, analyst Gene Munster estimates Apple to ship 55 million iPhones in the current March quarter, down from previous predictions of 62.5 million units,” Campbell reports. “June quarter expectations are also lower, down from 48.5 million units to 45 million. The downward adjustment is in response to collective circumstantial evidence of slower-than-expected production from Apple’s supply chain.”
“If March quarter iPhone sales come in under 61.17 million units, it will be the first year-over-year decline since the device launched in 2007,” Campbell reports. “Looking ahead, Munster sees iPhone returning to 5 percent year-over-year growth in the quarters ending September and December, as Apple is widely expected to maintain its usual yearly iPhone hardware refresh cycle this fall. For ‘iPhone 7,’ Munster predicts Apple might use 3D Touch in place of a home button and could incorporate a sapphire glass display. Piper Jaffray maintains an Overweight rating for AAPL with a $179 price target.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: It’ll be interesting to see if iPhone really will post its first year-over-year decline in Q216 and, if so, how Mr.Market reacts to that data point.
given the current atmosphere, my guess as to their reaction would be summed up with the term “bloodbath”.
but what else can one expect out of those short-sighted people.
while the rest of us buy more…
and Piper Jaffray is always so accurate in its predictions. Mr. Munster’s favorite word “might” gets used WAY too much
Mr. Munster is a great example of the ‘analyst’ problem. In the current, nearly worthless profession of ‘analyst’, anything that gets attention is successful. It doesn’t matter how bullshit, bizarro or outright wrong. If it get’s readers, if it gets SUCKERS, it’s successful.
Nearly worthless.
If Apple exceeds analyst’s highest expectations by 5% then the market will see that a confirmation that Apple has met their expectations and the price of AAPL will not fall much. The market is in FEAR MODE right now and constantly thinks that failure is just around the corner for Apple. Performance is not meaningful to the market but future performance is. It is the belief that some company will take all Apple’s business away and that Apple will become another Nokia, RIM, Apple of the 1990’s etc.
I doubt thinking about Apple the company is even in the equation. The driven herd doesn’t comprehend actual Apple The Company. It’s just another abstract stock entity. Moo Moo Moo.