Canaccord Genuity cuts Apple price target on soft demand

From a note to clients by analyst T. Micheal Walkley  that landed on my desktop Thursday:

Based on our North America survey work, we believe Apple maintained strong share of US smartphone sales at all 4 major carriers. However, our surveys indicated soft smartphone demand with disappointing initial XR sales.

Despite slowing iPhone sales, we still anticipate Apple will continue to grow its install base and believe the ecosystem will contribute to strong ongoing growth, particularly for higher-margin Services and Other Products.

Given the soft start to the latest lineup of iPhones, we are lowering our iPhone estimates and forecast lower year-over-year unit sales in C’19 and anticipate modest unit growth in C’20 based on an increasing installed base.

Maintains Buy rating, cuts price target to $225 from $250. 

My take: Whom are you going to believe, Apple’s VP or Canaccord’s survey subjects? And yet, Walkley is a believer:

We believe Apple can sustain double-digit Services revenue growth driven by growth from the App Store, strong subscriber growth in Apple Music, Apple Care, iTunes/iCloud and Apple Pay. In addition, we believe Apple is developing additional services such as video content that could lead to new areas of growth.