Neil Hughes
Recent reports on iPhone X demand and alleged production cuts have caused concern on Wall Street, where investors eagerly await Apple's March quarter guidance from its latest earnings report. AppleInsider gives you a rundown of what to expect.
General market consensus for the just-concluded December quarter calls for Apple to have sold 79 million iPhones in the three-month frame. That would best the 78.3 million iPhones Apple sold in the same period a year ago, representing holiday 2016.
According to UBS, the market expects an iPhone average selling price of $752, with 27 million iPhone X units sold. Apple doesn't break down sales by model, but it is likely to give commentary on how the iPhone X is performing with respect to current and past models.
For the iPad, Wall Street sees sales of 14 million with an average selling price of $441. Consensus also calls for services revenue of $8.65 billion.
In contrast, UBS analyst Steven Milunovich is a little higher, forecasting sales of 80.2 million iPhones (at a $763 ASP), with 32 million of those the iPhone X. He also calls for iPad sales of 14.1 million at a $431 ASP, and services revenue of $8.9 billion.
Looking forward to the March quarter, Wall Street consensus was at 62 million iPhone sales, but those numbers have been slipping in the wake of speculative reports saying sales are slowing more than Apple expected.
Milunovich is more cautious heading into the March quarter, forecasting iPhone sales of 58.4 million. Either number would be well beyond Apple's March 2017 quarter, however, when iPhone sales fell to 50.8 million, itself down from 5.12 million in 2016.
Apple's best-ever March quarter for iPhone sales came in 2015, when the company sold a blockbuster 61 million handsets, riding high on the iPhone 6 "super cycle."
With the March quarter already one-third complete, it's not expected that any major new product launches are coming before the end of the period. Apple's HomePod will begin shipping next Friday, but it is not expected to be a revenue driver in the way new iPhones, iPads or Macs are.
It's possible that Apple ships new MacBook Pros, or even a second-generation iPhone SE, before the end of March. But it's also likely that those upgrades wait until the June quarter.
Apple will give the results of its December quarter, and provide guidance for March, after markets close later today. A conference call with analysts and members of the media will follow at 2 p.m. Pacific, 5 p.m. Eastern, and AppleInsider will have full coverage.
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32 Comments
Of course. And if March was predicted to be a record quarter then all eyes (read: pessimism) would be on June. Every time Apple has a good quarter and the stock does nothing people say it’s not about the past but the future. Because with Apple the future can never be as good or better than the past. Wall Street is constantly assuming doom is around the quarter. And Apple leadership have done squat to change that narrative. All the stock buybacks in the world and Apple’s PE is still pathetic and the stock way more volatile compared to its tech peers. One sketchy supply chain rumor from Asia and the stock drops 2%. Disgusting. And a perfect example is Facebook. They admitted engagement is down because of the changes they made to the newsfeed yet the stock is up 4% today. If that was Apple the stock would be tanking today.
Beware the Ides of Smarch.
Yeah, guesses regarding the current quarter are much more important than the facts and hard numbers about the completed quarter (I mean, who really cares about one more blowout holiday season and all that crazy money?), and when we have the truth about the current quarter, nobody will care about that either. Maybe we should skip worrying about the current quarter now, and jump ahead to worrying about the next one, if we want to focus on what really matters. Or better yet, how about those supply constraints ruining the launch of iPhone XI?
(/s)
I don'y know what to think. On one hand, when has Apple's guidance ever been wrong? And Apple is repatriating $350B in the new tax law. OTOH, they missed the holiday season with a new product, batterygate is in full swing, software updates seem to have no QC, whole product lines have been dropped (airports and monitors,) the dollar continues to plummet, and who knows if a trade war with china is about to break out.
I guess Tim and Luca will reveal all soon.