A look at quarterly iPhone sales for the past 3 years tells its own story: 2015 2016 2017 Q1 74.5 Million 74.8 Million 78.3 Million Q2 61.2 Million 51.2 Million 50.7 Million Q3 47.5 Million 40.4 Million 41.0 Million Q4 48.0 Million 45.5 Million 40.7 Million Total: 231.2 Million 211.9 Million 210.7 Million
Jumping straight to competition, notably by Samsung (SSSMF) in the premium smartphone market, we see declining market share in 2 of the world's largest smartphone markets - China - Down to 13.7% and The US - Down to 34%. The reason for the quarterly breakdown is the significance of diving in to one of Samsung's biggest mishaps - The Note 7 failure. The recall initially began in September of 2016 and lasted until the Galaxy S8 was released on April of 2017. It's no secret that the lack of a better option boosted iPhone sales for Q1 2017 and Q2 2017, slowing the decline in sales on a global scale.
Assessing a continued downtrend from the lackluster performance of the iPhone 7 and 7 Plus, which disappointed, brings us to conclude that Samsung Note 7 Defectors Aided iPhone Sales for those quarters which would have been significantly lower if there was a viable replacement for the bi-annual (or annual) smartphone upgrade cycle. With expected continuation of market share loss in China and a yet-to-be-seen penetration into India's smartphone market, we believe those woes will weigh heavily on the company's sales performance. iPhone sales constitute over 62% of the company's revenues for 2017. A 5% decline in iPhone sales constitute a nearly complete wipe out of 2018 revenue growth expectations, where analysts are expecting Apple's Sales to Increase Roughly 15% to 254.32B.
Services - Upside? The company's Services segment is Rising over 22% in Q3 alone with efforts to boost its offering in the Apple Store and other services. The segment comprised 11.29% of the company's 2016 revenues and is expected to be 12.77% in 2017, growing nearly 5B for the year.
Its recent foray into Streaming is a worthwhile expansion with companies like Netflix (NASDAQ:NFLX) and Amazon (NASDAQ:AMZN) dominating the Expected 7.5B Market. Assuming Apple will be able to capture quite a significant chunk of market share with its massive user base; this can amount to over 1B of annual revenues, on a conservative note.
It is safe to assume that Others segment including Mac, iPad, iWatch and others will remain constant but stagnant growth rate in the upcoming years.
To Conclude the Upside vs. Downside of the aforementioned factors, with Services continuing their 20% upside (5B annually), Streaming captures a 50% market share (an unlikely 2B annually) and Others continue to perform stagnantly, it will amount to only 4% of iPhone sales revenues, not keeping up with current sales decrease.
Average Sales Price & Cash Flow Penetrating markets like India and improving China's market share requires lower phone prices, like the iPhone SE, which in turn hurts revenues with an overall lower Average Sales Price (NYSE:ASP). Chinese and Indian smartphone markets are increasingly Dominated by Lower Cost Advanced Companies. Apple's cash flow and pile, however large on paper, will remain under pressure as sales from its iPhone brand shrink and its foray into new technologies such as AI (Artificial Intelligence), AR/VR, Autonomous Vehicles and others increase Research & Development (R&D) expenses.
I belive that Apple will do well looking forward with its massive R&D and new technology penetration. But declining iPhone sales and the somewhat problematic iPhone 8 & iPhone X release will weigh far more on sales then new technologies will provide for the time being. A better ROI can be found elsewhere.
I'm starting Apple with a short term Sell rating & a $135 - $145 Price Target for 2018.
You have been holding this a long time. Great job.
TraderDanER
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@GrantPeace, Thanks! It's been a great ride and will likely be one again later on, but for now it's fairly valued.
G13Man
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1 more down side possibility , and the bad result of it so far
the lawsuit with QCOM and counter lawsuit ,
has already resulted in AAPL using an inferior wifi/modem !