Jefferies analysts, an American investment bank, released a report on Sunday saying that Apple's iPhone sales decline in the Chinese market is intensifying, and iPhone sales in China may decline further this year.
Analysts such as Edison Lee cited industry surveys in the report that Apple's latest-generation iPhone 15 series, released in September last year, had a bad start in China, with a year-on-year decline that recently widened to 30%.
In contrast, sales of other brands in China's mobile phone market increased last month, with Huawei, in particular, seeing the fastest growth with the launch of the Mate 60 device lineup. Huawei launched the Mate 60 series of phones at the end of August last year. Jefferies estimates that Huawei will ship 35 million smartphones in 2023.
iPhone sales fell by a double-digit percentage in December, and Jefferies expects a similar decline in Apple's phones in 2024. Last week, major **shopping** increased the discount of the iPhone, lowering the average selling price, but failed to stimulate sales growth.
The iPhone is arguably Apple's most important product, with about half of the company's revenue coming from it. Apple's revenue for the fourth fiscal quarter of fiscal 2023 (Q3 of calendar year) was $89.5 billion, and revenue from iPhone was $4380.5 billion US dollars.
Last week, Barclays and Piper Sandler downgraded Apple's ratings, and neither investment bank is optimistic about iPhone sales this year.
Dragged down by the downgrade, Apple's stock closed down in all four trading days last week (closed on Monday for New Year's Day), and its market value has evaporated nearly $170 billion. If you count the last trading day of last year, Apple's stock price has been five days in a row**.
As of last Friday, Apple's share price was up nearly 10% from its all-time high in mid-December and is currently at 181$18 shares, with a total market capitalization of 2$81 trillion.
With Apple's stock price continuing to be the most valuable company in the world, Microsoft is poised to reclaim the throne of the world's most valuable company, which currently has a market capitalization of 2$73 trillion.
Apple has been the world's most valuable publicly traded company since July 2022, becoming the first company to reach this milestone by surpassing $3 trillion in market capitalization in the middle of last year.
*: Finance Associated Press.
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