“Another Wall Street firm has cut expectations for Apple amid fears of soft smartphone and overall iPhone demand,” Thomas Franck reports for CNBC. “Canaccord Genuity analyst Michael Walkley reduced his 12-month price target to $225 from $250, implying 24 percent upside over the next year.”
“Canaccord Genuity also lowered its 2019 and 2020 earnings per share estimates,” Franck reports. “It now expects EPS of $13.25 next year and $14.69 in 2020 versus $13.46 and $15.18 previously.”
Franck reports, “Walkley slashed his iPhone units sales expectations to 213 million in 2018, 208 million in 2019 and 217 million in 2020.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: We estimate eleventy gazillion iPhone units sales in 2019 and umpteen bazillion in 2020. And we’ll be just as right as every other so-called analyst, too, since Apple no longer reports unit sales.
Also, the same proof of “sluggish iPhone demand,” supply chain checks, that’s being used again this year to talk down the stock was also used last year. The actual result, despite much fake handwringing: iPhone unit sales of 216.76 million, and increase of 4.88 million units over 2016’s total (211.88).
SEE ALSO:
Apple VP: iPhone XR has been company’s best-selling model every day since it launched – November 28, 2018
ZDNet spends one month with the Apple iPhone XR: ‘The best new iPhone for most people’ – November 26, 2018
WSJ reviews Apple’s 6.1-inch iPhone XR: ‘The best feature-to-price ratio of any iPhone possibly ever’ – October 26, 2018
John Gruber reviews Apple’s iPhone XR: ‘The new iPhone most people should buy’ – October 23, 2018
Gizmodo reviews Apple’s iPhone XR: ‘Affordability done right’ – October 23, 2018
It took Apple less than four days to sell out initial iPhone XR supply – October 23, 2018
Some of Apple’s iPhone XR models are already sold out – October 19, 2018
Apple’s 6.1-inch iPhone XR looks set to become a huge blockbuster – October 16, 2018
So to be clear in FY 2018 for apple it sold an additional 4.88m more units than the year before. to put that into perspective because apples numbers are so large… that is more than goggle sold in total fo the pixel and pixel xl last year. Apple is definitely melting down
With all the financial, technical and human resources available in hand complete with a brand new fancy office that others envy, can Tim Cook not do anything better than rejoicing and weeping, up and down, on his (virtually)single product business? The current situation is like watching a fire drill movie, with people running left and right with all sorts of scattered maneuvers.
No matter how you slice it, Tim Cook is not a CEO material after all. When the iPhone was selling well, his lack of ability has been masked by it, but when the going gets tougher, will he show his true leadership and lead the company to a success?
It appears that he is still totally bogged down in his past expertise, the managing and controlling so-called “supply chain”, i.e., a bean counter mentality. It’s always a patch up operation, increasing and decreasing the production, the price here and there, every now and then, while all along leaving the Mac biz almost untouched, and still obsessed with the convergence of the iOS and the Mac OS (more like the iOS absorbing the Mac OS), until he has realized that it reached a crisis point.
KenT- i have to ask what you are talking about here? Tim has not proven to be a good CEO? He brought us the apple watch which now dominates not only the wearable category but the entire watch industry in just 4 short years. He brought us airpods which again dominated in their category and estimated put it at over 30 million pairs sold in june. Then he brought us facetime which was a completely unannounced possibility in the face of all the in screen tech being touted and not only did it work as its supposed to its now better than Touch ID. Their mobile processors and GPU chips are 2-3 years ahead of anything else in the market espically in the new ipad pros all while doing it at a volume 10-200x larger than any other company out there. Lets not forget that profit margins are up the services business is now the size of a fortune 100 company alone and they are the only permium handset mfg still seeing yoy growth. so i ask again what the heck are you talking about?
What the heck am I talking about?
I was talking about the seeming lack of ability of Tim Cook to steady the ship with a consistent policy to lead the ship.
But you and I are not in the same wavelength in talking about the metrics of measuring Cooks management (operational) style. Let me talk about in a rather simplistic manner to save space. I am not even talking about each individual product (except in relation to lack of innovation). Cook made Apple into a one trick pony company at least for a foreseeable future, and this was why most of the criticisms tend to stem from his handling of the iPhone biz. Much of what I have been saying has been repeatedly posted by many people here already. I am not saying anything new.
To overly simplifying things, Tim Cook appears to be handling the iPhone matter that has originated in overpricing issue in a really haphazard way, hence creating a lack of confidence in him. Sign of overpricing started way back when the X was announced (at least that’s when we detected something was wrong). He/they overhyped the X and I felt like he was somewhat desperate. Then this year, production cutdown, then price cut-down by way of tieing up with Amazon (it’s like licensing the Mac OS to third party vendors) and offered the discount to Japanese carriers. Cook knew he push the profitability too hard, pushing consumers over the edge, creating discontent. A real patchwork.
This is not the only issue. There are others besides overpricing. I do not have time and space to list all of them but one example is selling memory chips at exorbitant prices or making computers very difficult to make reasonable access by user or third party repairers etc. These are all petty and consumers are fully aware of it.
I am running out of time, but addressing some of the specific issues raised by you, most of the hardware products you are suggesting as Cook’s credit are still Steve Jobs legacy. I only talk about the Apple Watch to illustrate the point. There is nothing new about it. Apple patented the smartwatch back in the late 1990s. It evolved into what was then called iWatch and Jobs was driving it. When it was just about to be announced, he checked out of this world and left us. It’s only 2014 or so when Cook finally decided to launch it. I remember he was emphasizing that “the time was ripe” or some such but it could have been launched much earlier. What took so long, Mr.Cook? But that was fine. It was launched and perhaps the timing was ripe. But it was definitely not Cook’s initiative but was actually a job’s legacy. All other things you are talking about are essentially the same. As in the Homepod, Cook jumps and haphazardly announce something only after someone else took the risk and launched. He is a follower, always tries to avoid risk. There are more fundamental issues with him (in my opinion) but I want to stop. I only hope he would legitimately succeed the excellent legacy of Apple and the reputation it has been building upto date, not a petty profit pursuit, i.e., money money money….
And I have absolutely no issues with the iPhone and never complained about itself. It’s an excellent “gadget” and that’s why I kept buying it. My beef is about Cook’s overpricing and other somewhat questionable maneuvers. But it uncovered and amplified his operational style issue, that has swollen into the avalanche of related issues, all consistent with his way of viewing matters.
Oh, one more thing.
Re AirPods, they are a byproduct that was forced on us when Apple eliminated 3.5mm jack. I did not buy it as there are many other excellent Bluetooth ear pods available at a much more reasonable price. To each his/her own. And here in Canada, it costs more than C$247 with tax! I seldom see them in the wild here but mostly younger people wearing it, making the antenna boom look like ear discharge streaking out, lol. Again, while it is well made, the point is more about greed than anything else (in my opinion). If Cook wants to make it to his credit, by all means.
Get the pruning shears. Lorena Bobbit’s coming for Apple for a second snip. Already Apple shareholders have been castrated so why even bother. Snip, snip, snip. Yeah, as a shareholder, I’m definitely feeling the pain.
These articles are so annoying as is also listening to the talking heads saying Microsoft is a stronger company than Apple isn’t helping one bit. I’m trying to ignore the noise.