Market watchers keenly await Apple’s third quarter earnings report which is slated to be revealed tomorrow. However, there already are a few interesting facts and figures that have been doing the rounds, including lifetime iPhone sales figure which is expected to reach a billion unit sales mark by the end of July itself.
Whether that still proves to be smile inducing for Apple investors and loyalists is something that remains to be seen given that the handset already seems to have gone out of favour with buyers off later. That this also happens to be the first time that iPhone has witnessed negative sales growth since its launch back in 2007 could also be worrisome for many.
To put in figures, iPhone sales for Q3 2016 is pegged to be around 40 million, which, if true, will be down from the 51.9 million iPhone devices it sold in the second quarter of the year. This, in turn, marks the second consecutive quarter of sales slump for Apple considering 74.78 million iPhones were sold in Q1 2016.
No doubt all of that is going to get reflected in the earnings report as well, with analysts claiming Apple could end up with $42.1 billion in revenue for the June quarter. This will mark an 18 percent dip considering that its $49.6 billion in revenue that the Cupertino giant reported during the same period a year ago.
However, what perhaps will make for the most interesting aspect of the earnings report is that the total iPhone sales so far could end up being a whopping 987 million taking into account the projected 40 million iPhone sales for the June quarter. By the same yardstick, it’s an average of 13 million iPhones that Apple might have sold every month since its launch in 2007. Also, going by the same rate, Apple is expected to end up selling more than a billion iPhone device by this month-end itself.
However, notwithstanding the slump in sales that iPhone might be witnessing at the moment, analysts believe it is just a temporary phenomenon with the device expected to hit the growth trajectory by 2017 itself. While the iPhone 7 is set to be just an incremental upgrade over its predecessor, it still is projected to account for 5 percent growth in iPhone sale for the fiscal year 2017.
Meanwhile, there already are rumors of Apple pushing ahead with the launch of iPhone 8 during fall 2017 instead of the customary iPhone 7S variant. Further, while details are missing at the moment, the general feel is that iPhone 8 will be a huge leap over the current iPhone 7 and will be a device befitting the 10th-anniversary celebrations of iPhone.
