The debate on whether ‘peak iPhone‘ is a temporary glitch or a longer-term problem continues, with Deutsche Bank analyst Sherri Scribner arguing the case for the latter view. Business Insider posted a graph suggesting that Apple’s year-on-year growth not only tracks that of the overall smartphone market – which is on a steady decline toward zero – but actually underperforms the market as a whole.
My personal view is that the correlation between the two lines is decent but far from perfect, and there are enough variables in the mix to make extrapolating that blue line a dangerous business.
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How about some labels on the lines?
The labels are directly underneath.
If the page is too wide, the image gets cropped dynamically. Cutting off the top and bottom.
That’s true. Images are capped at 1000 pixels wide by 500 pixels deep, so it’s worth ensuring your browser window is at least 1000 pixels wide.
Currently using 1920×1080 monitor at 100% scaling in Chrome and I cannot see the labels. I would imagine my user scenario isn’t very unique.
Black line is Total Smartphone Market Y/Y Growth.
Blue line is Apple Y/Y Growth.
IMO, its a disingenuous chart unless you compare similar products. “Smartphone market” includes products that are not even playing the same game, let alone in the same ballpark.
This also makes sense if you flip around the causation and assume that the overall market is tracking Apple. Iphone is the single most popular phone on the market, and the overall market trend likely includes the iPhone. So if we assume that the iPhone makes up a large chunk of the overall market, then of course the apple only trend correlates with it, because it’s effectively correlating with itself. How else do you explain the overall market’s continual downward trend every quarter, when new android phones are released throughout the entire year?
That problem where an analyst just looks at number of handsets sold and not share of the overall profits in the smartphone market.
That and being y/y growth so it’s percentages not actual numbers – Microsoft could have decent month on month growth and still be selling tiny numbers of phones in comparison to Apple who would need to sell a hell of a lot more phones to get the same month ion month growth %.
the problem with ignorants like you is said the analysts do use profit margins to get to the target price levels for AAPL. So better read up.
Apple dropped below the line because of growth/demand for the bigger phones that Apple didn’t have. Then they jumped above the line when they released bigger phones. Now there is a growth percentage correction that looks bad only because the jump in growth during the prior year. So basically, this graph doesn’t tell the real story. Furthermore, Apple actually maintained sales at a time when the overal market contracted, with the latest reported quarter marginally beating the prior one.
I think when they compare iPhones against other smartphones, they should compare against similarly priced smartphones because that’s a little more accurate as to Apple’s competition. A $50 to $350 smartphone is not really a direct competitor since the person is VERY price sensitive and those people simply won’t look at anything priced above that price range.