Myth Broken
It has been found that the quarterly sales volume of the iPhone decreased in the first quarter of this year, by approximately 10 million units from a year ago, for the first time since its debut in 2007. As a result, Apple recorded its first decline in quarterly sales revenue in 13 years.
On April 26, Apple announced that it recorded a sales revenue of US$50.56 billion in the first quarter of this year. The amount is 12.8% less than that of the same period of the previous year. Likewise, the iPhone sales volume dropped from about 61 million units to approximately 51.2 million units between the first quarters of 2015 and this year.
Experts point out that this is because the focus of the global smartphone market is shifting toward inexpensive phones but Apple failed to respond to the change. The ratio of High-end smartphones, which used to account for 90% of the global smartphone sales in 2012, has dropped to less than 50%. According to market research firm Strategy Analytics, at least 70% of the smartphones sold this year are estimated to be priced at US$400 or less.
At present, Most of Apple’s smartphone products are high-end ones but the other suppliers including Samsung Electronics are adding more and more economical smartphones to their lineups. Apple recently released the iPhone SE, a non-premium product, but it has a price of as high as 700,000 won or so.
Another reason is a rapid drop in the sales of the iPhone in China that is attributable to the saturation of the local market. The local sales showed a decrease of 26% in the first quarter of this year after having increased by more than 70% for four quarters in a row.