Apple is suffering its worst quarter ever with regards to sales of its iPhone series. This is the first time the company is reporting a decline in the number of iOS smartphones sold since the launch of the iPhone in 2007. Less than a fortnight ago, market research firm Trendforce, had noted that Samsung boasted of twice as many global device shipments as Apple in the first quarter of 2016. Shipment figures are not very precise since they only reveal the number of units sent over to retailers and not how many were bought by end users.
As it is, worldwide smartphone shipments have taken a hit, posting a year-on-year decline of 1.3 percent. The lowered demand is being blamed on market saturation, while developing nations like India and China are the reason why the mobile device industry hasn’t been dealt a major blow yet. In spite of this, iPhone sales to Greater China dropped by 26 percent to touch $12.49 billion. TrendForce’s Avril Wu implies that the iPhone SE will be able to alleviate Apple’s falling revenue from phone shipments in the current quarter to a certain extent.
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Sales figures of the 4-inch handset have naturally not been included in the total count for the previous quarter. During the January to March quarter, Apple sold 51.2 million iPhone units, or 10 million less than what it vended during the same quarter in 2015. The company’s iPhone revenue was claimed to be $32.86 billion, while earnings from its iPad business was reckoned at $4.41 billion during Q1 2016. Perhaps its biggest headache right now is its lackluster performance in Hong Kong and Taiwan, two places where it sales rose by 71 percent in Q1 2015.
As people progress to higher end devices, they also tend to hold on to them longer, or to upgrade. This trend and market saturation is expected to render the handset market almost stagnant at some point in the future. In other words, the smartphone is likely to face the same fate as the PC sooner or later. Apple’s iPhone troubles might just be mirroring flagging sales across the globe after all.