What is one day Apple woke up to the rude shock that people no longer iPhone 7 and decide not to buy the smartphone? Considering that most of the company’s finances are revolved around the handsets, a decline in sales is not something that the Silicon Valley giant is ready to welcome. But the unfortunate reality is that all indications are going towards that direction.
Apple has by far refused to make public the number of the iPhone 7 sold so far. This has left market analysts to work hand in hand with third-party data to analyze the situation at hand. Ming-Chi Kuo has proved to be reliable over the years and has been getting data on shipment of the iPhone 7 so as to have a picture of the happening.
Kuo’s data is in agreement with data from other bodies using the same approach. The iPhone 7 sales are by far higher than it was expected but declining shipment of the smaller iPhone 7 is dragging this down.
Tim Cook, Apple’s CEO, has been working to ensure expectations are not that high around the latest smartphones. Online sales through the Apple website were not shipped during the opening weekend, network partners had less stock to sell and it was almost impossible to walk up to an Apple Store on launch day.
Each launch will always come in a unique way and will always have something that dampens any form of comparison. Analysts are awre of this and they usually try to correct their work. Kuo is by far making a conclusion that is reflected in other analysis.
Opening weekend
In its opening weekend, iPhone 7 was able to go higher by 1.11 percent of the iPhone market while iPhone 7 Plus enjoyed an up of 0.21 percent. In 2015 within the same period, iPhone 6S had 1.37 percent while iPhone 6S Plus had 0.35 percent. The current sales may be down but Apple had done quite a number of sales online, which are yet to be delivered.
Localytics, market analyst, said that most people opted to make their orders online rather than make long queues. It goes on to explain that it doesn’t feel like Apple has very much to hide in the first-weekend sales of the iPhone 7 and iPhone 7 Plus. Yes the percentages are down, but Apple’s iOS user base has increased.
We are thus left with only one question, what is responsible for the lower percentage? Is it a drop in sales or handsets taking quite long to reach the customer’s hands?