Folks keep saying the market is saturated and not growing, which may be the case and a suitable excuse for declining numbers, but here is the point because in this new world, some manufacturers are still experiencing huge growth in their numbers and if the market is stagnated then they are growing because of what are known as conquest sales, that is taking share from someone else, e.g. Apple, HTC, Sony and Samsung.
Growth is not happening at the high end. It's happening at the low end. Apple doesn't offer a low end phone, for better or worse. No cheap phone is taking away an iPhone sale. That person was never going to buy an iPhone. Data shows more Android switchers to iPhone than the other way around. Data does not show iPhone users abandoning the iPhone in favor of Galaxy or Pixel or any other "premium" smartphone.
So numbers of phones sold is important (though no one is obligated to share their numbers), because revenue only goes so far in telling the story.
It's actually not important. If it were, other companies would have been releasing numbers all along too. It was just bragging rights. What's important is user base. In January 2016, Apple had 1 billion active iOS devices. In February 2018, that number grew to 1.3 billion. Installed base is the critical metric.
As we have seen for the last 2-3 quarters Apple’s revenue has held up because of the new pricing, but if actual phones sold is declining, then eventually that starts to impact other things for Apple.
Not really. Take the watch. Supposedly they sold 20 million watches last year. They sold over 200 million iPhones, right? How many iPhones are out in the wild? If there are over 1.3 billion activate iOS devices, let's assume 70% are iPhones. Apple still has hundreds of million of potential Watch (and AirPod and iCloud and Apple Music and...) customers even if iPhones sales tank.
No iPhone sale, then no Apple Watch sale, no $39 case sale, no AppleCare sale, likely no iCloud sale, likely no Apple Music sale. If folks start not relying on the Apple eco-system, then no Mac sale?
We're SO FAR away from that happening simply because they sold a few million less iPhones than they did in the same quarter last year. This sales numbers hysteria is so ridiculous. Think! iPhone sales were bound to flatten out at some point and will likely decline a bit and level out as upgrade cycles lengthen. And, again, the active iOS user base continues to grow. People who have never owned an iPhone buy a used one or receive a gift from a friend. That's not a new sale, but it is a new iOS user and, at some point, probably a new customer for Apple.
The reason Apple used to “brag” about iPhone numbers was two fold, one to literally brag (and intimidate competitors) and the other was to tell the market about the sales tail, that is all those add ons that were going drive future revenue (and stock price) for every iPhone sold.
It was bragging. They don't need to release sales numbers to tell the market about the sales tail. Continued growth in services and "other" are already doing that. We don't need unit sales numbers to see that Apple is continuing to sell more accessories and services to iPhone owners. And if you're a third party hardware manufacturer, my guess is that you're more concerned about the size of the installed base than any quarter's sales numbers. Stock price
should be about revenue, not any one particular product's sales numbers. By focusing so much on unit sales, Apple unintentionally linked stock price with unit sales. Cook is trying to end that nonsense and get the market focused on what really matters, overall revenue. As I've said before, it's about the value of the total customer relationship, not what particular product that customer buys in any given quarter.
So, declining numbers of phones (because of price, saturated market, stronger competition) and the inability to maintain high pricing (easy in an exploding market) is a big deal and goes far beyond “releasing iPhone sales numbers”
No, it's not a big deal. It's just handwringing hysteria. Apple can't control the saturated market. As for stronger competition, what competition? What evidence is there to show that Apple users are abandoning the platform and choosing another product instead? And given that Apple's guidance for the quarter is still $84B, I don't think Apple has had much trouble maintaining higher pricing. I do think their top of the line phones are too expensive and I expect the prices to drop next cycle, but, again, there's no evidence that people are leaving the platform in droves because of higher prices. That is all just Apple hater hysteria.
