Apple's stock loses over $160B as analysts forecast smartphone decline

neowin.net

8 points·simula67··4 comments

It's dropped about $30/share in the last 6 months according too the article, which of course left out any data on sales (which are solid), profits (also solid) or anything besides this one report on China sales. The run up and drop could entirely be explained by the Apple Watch not selling as well as some investors hoped. Is this really news or just someone trying to boost their short share activity a bit before cashing in?

In other words: pointless trading article is pointless.

Why would the smartphone be in decline?

The article only mentions that forecasts for the increase of cell-phone demand in China is around 14%, whereas that same market experienced 27% growth from 2014 to now (we'd have to follow the article's sources to confirm this or disentangle the exact forecast and measurement).

So decline in this setting means a decline in growth -- that growth is slowing down. Whether that remains the longer term trend is still a hard call to make, and the article makes no comments about growth in other geographic markets.

It's definitely disingenuous of the article's author to make generic statements about all smartphones or statements that at first blush seem to be about the general worldwide demand for smartphone technology. But this article isn't really a robust analysis of anything; just clickbait to feed confirmation bias of market pessimists and spread more FUD to befuddled mainstream news patron types.

This sounds more like market saturation - nobody is literally throwing their iOS devices out and going back to flip phones.

Apple's subtle shift towards leasing phones instead of carrier-subsidized purchases hints to me that they already know what's up in the marketplace.

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