Analysts are starting to get nervous about Apple’s third quarter results, due to be revealed on 24 July. It is expected that iPhone sales will decline in the run up to the anticipated iPhone 5 launch in October.
Credit Suisse has lowered expectations and Morgan Stanley has issued a note to investors, notes Business Insider.
The negative outlook is based on Apple’s own guidance for the quarter, which was even lower than expected.
Morgan Stanley analyst Katy Huberty noted that Apple has only guided this far below expectations once since June 2009, and that was the September quarter of last year when it correctly predicted consumers would buy fewer iPhones as they waited for the next release.
That quarter, back in October 2011, missed analysts estimates. In that quarter Apple sold 14.1 million iPhones. Deutsche Bank's Chris Whitmore and Needham's Charlie Wolf, had expected sales of 17 million iPhones. Asymco's Horace Dediu predicted iPhone unit sales of 26.8 million. Following the results Dediu explained that he had gone wrong because: “Each new iPhone launch was preceded by a quarter where units went down sequentially. The same has happened with the iPad for the one tradition we’ve had so far.”
Following that results announcement Apple's share price went down to $300.15 from $318.00 in after hours trading.
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Comments received
Dragonfly said on Mon, 14 May 2012
Would it be better for Apple to reduce the price of their outgoing 4S model, a few months before the iPhone 5 comes out. They usually reduce it a little anyway when the new iPhone gets released, they just need to start the reduction a couple of months before that date, or perhaps add some incentives for buying an older model, free iTunes match account for a year or something, so that some people actually wait till Q3 before they buy their iPhone.
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