Apple Forecasts Surge in iPhone Sales

By Douglas A. McIntyre Published Jul 12, 1:05PM EDT

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Apple (NASDAQ: AAPL) expects to sell nine million more iPhones in the second half of 2024 than last year. It expects its new AI features to be the catalyst for the surge. If successful, that would mean 90 million units sold from July through December.

Bloomberg gathered the numbers from suppliers and others with relationships with Apple. Much of last year’s slow sales were driven by the erosion of Apple’s market share in China, the world’s largest smartphone market. Apple still faces AI smartphones from local companies, including Huawei and Xiaomi.

Apple needs a major win to get its stock back on track. After a sell-off early in the year, Apple’s announcement of AI products at its June developer meeting pushed the shares up. The stock price has improved enough, so its performance has been slightly better than the S&P 500 this year. But, traders are used to Apple outperforming the market. The stock price of big tech rival Amazon (NASDAQ: AAPL) is up 31%. Alphabet’s (NASDAQ: GOOGL) is up 37% in 2024.

Apple had a hurdle before it announces the iPhone 16 in September. It will disclose earnings next month. Investors will probably accept mediocre numbers because that has been all Apple has produced recently. The reaction to the following quarter will be different because it will include the period during which the iPhone 16 was released.

The lack of AI products is part of what made Apple’s stock underperform. Strong AI features will make the stock recover.

About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.