Can Apple Sell $200 Billion Worth of iPhones?

By Douglas A. McIntyre Published Aug 21, 9:30AM EDT

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Can Apple Sell $200 Billion Worth of iPhones? — © Apple Inc.

Investors who think Apple’s best days are behind it usually use slowing iPhone sales as the basis of their argument. Apple has had over a dozen generations of the world’s best-known smartphones. However, 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. (These are the 25 biggest product flops of the past decade.)
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Many Apple optimists think Apple’s financial fortunes will be saved by the new iPhone 15. Apple releases a new iPhone every September. Each has a new suite of hardware and software improvements. Apple gambles that there are enough upgrades to keep people rushing to Apple stores or those run by Verizon, AT&T and T-Mobile.
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There are rumors that the iPhone 15 will have a new charging port compatible with most other smartphones. People will no longer be annoyed about the need to keep two charging systems. The iPhone’s port will be the same as the ones used on most PCs and competing smartphones.
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Other improvements and changes include a thinner case. The iPhone 15 may also have a titanium shell, which will replace the one on current models that is made of steel. Apple always adds a more powerful chip. The new one is known as the 3-nanometer A17. Each generation of iPhone gets a “better” camera too. According to Mac Rumors, this will be a “telephoto lens technology as part of their standard three-camera array.”
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One risk Apple worries about is that the upgrades on its new iPhones will not improve enough to drive huge sales.

For the iPhone to succeed, Apple will need to sell $200 billion of them from its launch next month until the same date next year. Otherwise, the pace will be too slow to support the optimist’s view of iPhone demand. Apple’s financial success depends on it.

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.