Apple Stock News
Apple Inc. has grown since its conception to become a giant in its industry and to deliver the largest profits of the world’s publicly traded companies. The iPhone is the driving force behind the company’s revenues with the phone bringing in two-thirds of Apple’s sales and profits. Prices for the covetted smartphones are most commonly close to $700, though the company began to sell the new iPhone SE for just $400 in an attempt to widen their customer base.
In China and India, however, where the company is hoping to see significant growth in sales, this price drop will likely not be significant enough to attract hoards of new clients. The majority of smartphones sold in China (around 70%) cost less than $300 and in India 80% of smartphones have pricetags below $150. These numbers don’t bode well for Apple as they hope to expand to make up for slowing purchase rates in the United States and Western Europe.
With the slowing market and reduced production cycles, many analysts are speculating that there will be no big sales increase this quarter. In fact, the boosts to revenue that Apple has seen in recent years is getting harder and harder to replicate as the market becomes more saturated. If Apple reports a loss this quarter it will be a first for the company since 2003 when Steve Jobs was helping make the laptop mainstream. Concerns about Apple’s performance are already affecting stock prices with AAPL seeing a 3% dip last week. Apple will release it’s earning report for the first quarter today, April 26th at 5PM Eastern Standard Time.