Will Smartphone Sales Hurt Apple iPhone?

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By Douglas A. McIntyre Published
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Will Smartphone Sales Hurt Apple iPhone?

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Global smartphone sales will drop to their lowest level in a decade. Will the falling tide scuttle all companies in the business? Given Apple’s share of this market, investors ought to be concerned. (Customers are abandoning these 25 brands.)
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Highly regarded research firm Counterpoint recently released a paper titled “2023 Global Smartphone Shipments to Hit Decade Low As Apple Inches Closer to Top Spot.” But will that top spot allow Apple iPhone sales to jump as it releases the iPhone 15?
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The study shows global smartphone shipments will decline 6% from last year to 1.15 billion. Asia and North American activity are the culprits, as are “economic headwinds.” For these reasons, “consumers are hesitant to upgrade their devices, pushing replacement rates for the US and globally to record highs.” The iPhone 15 is the next upgrade in Apple’s annual cycle of iPhone releases.
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The iPhone 15 should make sales of the smartphone surge, as has been true every year for a decade. The iPhone has turned Apple into a behemoth with the most cash-rich balance sheet in the world and a market cap of about $3 trillion, which is also the largest.
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iPhone sales struggled in Apple’s most recently reported quarter. Revenue from iPhone sales dropped to $39.7 billion from $40.7 billion in the same quarter a year ago. Apple’s overall revenue dropped from $83.0 billion to $81.8 billion. The reason the numbers were not worse was Apple’s surging Services revenue. This rose to $21.2 billion from $19.0 billion.

The worry about Apple’s upgrade cycle is whether a new iPhone is enough of an improvement over the current one to bring in buyers. Apple will know that in a month or so.

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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.

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